Rachel Stevens has thanked fans for their support following her split from husband Alex Bourne

In a post on Instagram Stories, she wrote: "I just wanted to say thank you so much for all your lovely messages of love and support. It means so much."

Rachel and Alex were childhood sweethearts. They married in 2009 in a ceremony at luxury London hotel Claridge's and had been due to celebrate their 13th wedding anniversary in August.

They are parents to two daughters, Amelie, 11, and Minnie, eight.

Announcing the news of the split on social media last week, Rachel wrote: "I just wanted to share with you all that after time and consideration the difficult decision has been made for Alex and I to separate.

"While we are no longer partners in marriage, we will remain partners in parenthood to our beautiful girls and continue with love and respect for each other.

"I feel so incredibly grateful for the life we built together and will now continue to be focused on moving forward united as a family."

The pop star previously opened up about their relationship during an appearance on Roxie Nafousi's 'The Moments That Made Me' podcast, explaining how she bumped into her former boyfriend Alex and they fell in love all over again.

She said: "We were childhood sweethearts. We went out with each other when we were 12, we met at youth club and I was besotted with him!

"We went out for probably about four weeks and when you're that age that was a really long time! ...

We then went on dates again when we were like 16 and then again when we were 18 and then we parted ways, you know, obviously I went off and did my thing he went off and did his thing.

"Years and years later, I was in Selfridges randomly and he walked in and we bumped into each other. We were both in our late 20s and weirdly he said as he was walking in, I know I'm going to see you, he knew he was going to see me ... "

They didn't get together again right away as Alex had a girlfriend, but romance bloomed after that relationship ended and they jetted off to Los Angeles together.

Rachel went on: "It was just lovely to see him as an old friend and from that moment on we kept randomly bumping into each other.

"His relationship with his girlfriend ended and then I went off to LA and he was an actor at the time so he came out to LA, too. Then we rekindled our relationship again!

"So, it was quite a random meeting and then just sort of randomly bumping into each other it was like we were being pulled back to each other."