As she gears up for a return to the spotlight, Lea Michele is offering a heartfelt tribute to her former boyfriend and “Glee” co-star Cory Monteith.
On Wednesday, the actor acknowledged the ninth anniversary of Monteith’s death with a throwback photo on her Instagram story. The photo appears to have been taken during the filming of a 2011 episode of “Glee” in New York.
Michele didn’t write a caption, but added a heart emoji to the image.
Michele and Monteith met while filming the debut season of “Glee” in 2009. Though the exact timeline of their relationship is unclear, they publicly confirmed they were a couple about three years later.
The two actors were still dating when Monteith died of a drug overdose in 2013 at age 31. Michele has acknowledged his death on social media every year since, and has at least two tattoos in his memory.
“We talked about a lot of things,” she recalled to Glamour UK in 2014. “We talked about children and what we would look like when we grew old, and who would be fat and how we would stay thin. We talked about where we wanted to go and what we wanted to do. We were done. We were it.”
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“When you’re at that place in your life with someone, you talk about everything,” she continued. “But today I feel like I was given the best part of Cory, and I’m thankful for that.”
Michele went on to find love with Zandy Reich, whom she married in 2019. The couple became first-time parents to son Ever Leo in 2020.
These days, the actor’s career is once again in high gear. Earlier this week, she confirmed she’d be joining the cast of Broadway’s “Funny Girl” revival as Ziegfeld Follies comedian Fanny Brice in September.
This will be her first engagement on Broadway since 2006’s “Spring Awakening,” in which she originated the role of Wendla.