Henry Golding and Liv Lo: Their Documented Relationship

In the piece that follows, I trace the documented relationship between Henry Golding and Liv Lo — not to explain who either of them is, but to look at what a relationship actually goes through when it starts across two cities, survives a wedding and two very different births, and holds together through a loss that Liv Lo has spoken about candidly in her own words. If any of that resonates with your own relationship — the distance, the different ways two partners can experience the same hard moment — I designed a couple communication test that maps how listening, conflict and repair actually work between you and your partner. I also wrote a book on attachment and how it shapes long-term bonds, Understanding Your Attachment Style, if you'd like to go further. And if you'd rather start with your own exchanges, ScanMyLove gives you an objective, structured read of how you and your partner actually communicate.

A Career That Started With a Camera, Not a Script

Henry Golding was born on 5 February 1987 in Betong, a town in the Malaysian state of Sarawak, on the island of Borneo, to an English father, Clive, a former army engineer, and a Malaysian mother, Margaret Likan, of Iban descent. The family moved to Surrey, England, when he was eight. He left school without going to university and spent several years working as a hairdresser on Sloane Street in London before moving back to Malaysia at twenty-one to try his luck in front of a camera instead of behind a pair of scissors.

That decision led to a decade as a television travel presenter — an ESPN football show, then the BBC's The Travel Show, then Discovery Channel Asia's Surviving Borneo — none of which, on paper, looked like a path to Hollywood. It was that regional television work, and specifically the fact that a casting team in Asia had noticed him through it, that led director Jon M. Chu to contact him about auditioning for a film being shot largely in Singapore: Crazy Rich Asians. Golding, who didn't see himself as an actor, hesitated before agreeing to audition. In 2018, he made his feature film debut in the role of Nick Young — explicitly written as a Singaporean multimillionaire — and became, almost overnight, one of the most recognisable new faces in international cinema.

It is worth being precise here, because the two facts are easy to blur: Henry Golding is not Singaporean. He is a British citizen, born in Malaysia to an English father and a Malaysian mother. What connects him to Singapore is something else entirely — a role he played, and, as it turns out, the place where his life changed in a more private and more lasting way than any film role.

Two Cities, One Relationship

At the point where his television career was gathering pace, Henry Golding was living in Singapore. Liv Lo — a Taiwanese-Italian television presenter, model and yoga instructor, born in Taichung on 21 May 1985 — was living in Tokyo. According to several accounts of how they met, their paths crossed around New Year, at a gathering with mutual friends; the details differ slightly from one telling to the next — a nightclub in one version, a friend's birthday party in another, the year given as either 2010 or 2011 — but the core of the story is consistent. Liv approached him as she was on her way out, telling him, in essence, that she was leaving and that if he wanted to see her again, this was his moment. Golding later described what followed: "We saw and planned our future so effortlessly. It was like our gut instincts took over, and the rest was fate." Liv Lo, for her part, later explained what had pushed her to make the first move: "It took a lot of guts, but I was just drawn to him. I feel that he draws a certain spontaneity and spark, and it's obvious that it drives me as well."

What came next was not, in fact, effortless in the logistical sense. With Lo based in Tokyo and Golding based in Singapore, the two began their relationship long-distance, across two cities and two careers, before eventually settling in the same place. It is this period — not any biographical fact about Golding himself — that gives Singapore its place in this story: not his nationality, but the city where a relationship that would go on to survive marriage, parenthood and a very public loss actually began. As I explore in my book Understanding Your Attachment Style, a secure bond built early — even across two cities — tends to set the pattern for how a couple handles far bigger distances later, emotional as much as geographic.

An Engagement in Phuket, a Wedding in Sarawak

The couple got engaged in 2015, on their fourth anniversary, during a trip to Phuket, Thailand. Golding arranged a sunset dinner with a string quartet and champagne on arrival; Liv Lo later described what followed the meal: "However, we took a stroll on the rocks and he proposed at the magic hour. Unforgettable."

They married on 20 August 2016 — not in Singapore, but at the Cove 55 Resort in Sarawak, Golding's home region in Malaysia. Liv Lo wore a Galia Lahav gown; Golding wore a custom blue tuxedo. It was a wedding rooted in his own origins, even as the relationship that led to it had first taken shape somewhere else entirely.

A Loss, Told in Liv Lo's Own Words

The most difficult chapter of the couple's story is also the one that Liv Lo chose, later, to make public herself. On 1 January 2020, during a trip to Peru with Golding, she discovered she was pregnant. Around the tenth week, an ultrasound found no heartbeat. "It was painful that our baby didn't have a heartbeat on the first scan," she later wrote.

What followed was made harder by distance: Golding was away filming at the time, and Lo went through the medical procedure — a missed miscarriage — largely on her own, reuniting with him roughly a week later, in Tokyo. She described the gap directly: "Even with friends in LA to support me, going through the process on my own, and then catching up with him in Tokyo meant that he was left out of the emotional journey."

That sentence is worth sitting with, because of what it names, in her own account: two people going through the same loss on different timelines and, quite literally, in different places — one of them present for the diagnosis and the procedure, the other reachable only by phone. It says nothing about how much either partner cared. It says something about what happens when a demanding, travel-heavy career collides with a private medical crisis: presence becomes logistically difficult exactly when it matters most. Nothing about this passage is offered as an explanation of Henry Golding's or Liv Lo's character — it is simply what Liv Lo herself described happening to her.

Lo became pregnant again in June 2020. Because of what they had been through, she and Golding kept the news private until the twentieth week — "until we hit 20 weeks and we were fully in the clear," as she put it — before announcing it publicly that November. Their first daughter, Lyla, was born on 31 March 2021. Speaking to Good Morning America about becoming a father, Golding said it had "allowed me to really kind of focus in on what really matters in life."

A Second Daughter, and a Harder Delivery Than Expected

Their second daughter, Florence, arrived in September 2023, after a delivery that turned out to be more complicated than the first. Lo experienced bleeding before labour began on 9 September; Florence needed care in the neonatal intensive care unit for breathing difficulties linked to meconium aspiration and pneumonia, and Lo herself was hospitalised on 12 September for a blood infection, which she treated with medication alongside reiki healing she sought out on her own.

Reflecting on that period afterward, Lo wrote: "Healing from post-partum, a blood infection, becoming a mother of two, and breastfeeding at the same time was an intense experience that rebirthed me at the same time as my daughter Florence." The couple described the birth together in simpler terms: "The journey of childbirth is full of its ups and downs, but glorious none the other," with Golding adding, of that period, "the focus is the baby."

What a Decade Adds Up To

Unlike some public relationships that are chronicled almost entirely through rumour and denial, the story of Henry Golding and Liv Lo is, at nearly every turn, told through their own words: how they met, why she approached him, what the proposal felt like, what it meant to lose a pregnancy while he was working abroad, what it took to recover from a complicated second birth. No source consulted for this article reports any separation, dispute, or public rupture between them at any point since they met. As I discuss in my book Saving Your Relationship: Communication, Crises, and Renewal, couples who stay this consistent over a decade usually aren't avoiding hard moments — they're getting better, one crisis at a time, at repairing after them.

None of this is a claim about who either of them is as a person, or what their marriage will look like in another ten years. What their own account does offer, though, is an unusually candid record of what a relationship can go through and still hold together: long-distance across two cities before either of them was famous, a proposal planned in detail, a loss that neither of them experienced the same way at the same time, and a second birth that turned out to be far harder than anyone expected. Read together, in their own words rather than filtered through speculation, it is less a fairy tale than a fairly ordinary account of what staying together actually requires — even when, for a while, one half of the couple is in Tokyo and the other is in Singapore.

Also Read

• Long-Distance Relationships: 5 Ways to Make It Work
• Perinatal Grief: Coping With Miscarriage & Invisible Loss

FAQ

Is Henry Golding actually Singaporean?

No. Henry Golding is a British citizen, born on 5 February 1987 in Betong, in the Malaysian state of Sarawak, to an English father and a Malaysian mother. His connection to Singapore comes from his 2018 role as Nick Young in Crazy Rich Asians and, more lastingly, from the years he lived there while his relationship with Liv Lo was taking shape.

How did Henry Golding and Liv Lo meet?

According to several accounts, they met around New Year, either in 2010 or 2011, at a gathering with mutual friends, while Golding was living in Singapore and Liv Lo was living in Tokyo. The exact setting differs slightly between tellings, but both have described Liv Lo approaching him as she was about to leave.

Did Liv Lo have a miscarriage?

Yes. Liv Lo has spoken publicly about a missed miscarriage discovered around the tenth week of a pregnancy in January 2020, which she went through largely on her own while Golding was away filming, reuniting with him about a week later. The couple went on to have two daughters, Lyla (2021) and Florence (2023).