Corrie's 'Michelle' and husband Ryder split up
Coronation Street actress Kym Ryder and her husband Jack are separating, it has been announced.
The pair, who married in 2002, said the split was “amicable”.
Ex-EastEnders star Jack will continue to see Kym’s children and no one else is involved in the break-up of their marriage, a statement from ITV said.
The statement from the Coronation Street broadcaster said: “With great sadness, Kym and Jack Ryder have decided to separate after seven years together.
“Their separation is amicable and they remain friends, with Jack continuing to see Kym’s children, David and Emily.
“There is no one else involved in the break up of their marriage.
“Neither Jack nor Kym will be commenting further to the press, and in consideration of the children’s emotional welfare, they have requested the media respect their privacy on this occasion.”
Kym, 31, shot to fame when she won a place in the band Hear’Say on the TV show Popstars in 2001.
The band’s first album sold 1.2 million copies but Kym acrimoniously quit the band a year later amid reports of clashes with Myleene Klass.
Her first solo single went to Number Two in the UK charts but her attempt at a solo career foundered soon afterwards, and Kym was dropped from her record label.
Jack, 26, played Jamie Mitchell in EastEnders from 1998 to 2002.
The pair first met when they bumped into each other in a BBC canteen while Hear’Say were on Top Of The Pops.
Jack was still starring in EastEnders and Kym was a single mother of two.
A whirlwind romance resulted in a wedding in 2002, when Kym was 25 and Jack just 20.
Their wedding, in front of 300 family and friends, was covered in the pages of OK! Magazine for a reported £300,000 (€385,000) deal.
Not long afterwards, Jack quit EastEnders, and Kym left the band. The pair have split previously before reconciling.
While Kym resurrected her career as Michelle Connor in Coronation Street, her husband’s has faltered.
Kym, crowned the 2008 Celebrity Mum of the Year, first appeared in Coronation Street in April 2006, initially for just four episodes.
She has won a National Television Award, a British Soap Award and a TV Quick award for her role as the Street’s feisty barmaid.
Kym, known as Kym Marsh before she married, last year said the couple were planning to add to their family.
Of her marriage, she said: “We’re definitely not Peter and Jordan and we’re not the perfect couple. We’re just happy being us.
“Our relationship is good because we work at it, and we’re friends as well as being in love.
“Jack and I have our own lives outside the family so we can come home and talk about something else. It’s healthy for a relationship.”
She has also leapt to her husband’s defence over suggestions that he is a kept man on her Coronation Street wages.
“Just because he’s not on TV five nights a week, people think he’s not working. That couldn’t be further from the truth,” she has said.
“Because he went into EastEnders at just 17 years old, he wanted to experience other aspects of the acting world so he’s chosen to stay away from TV.”
Kym famously broke down in tears on Popstars when she admitted she had kept her children, by ex-partner David Cunliffe, a secret.
