When Heidi Montag moved from Colorado to study fashion at San Francisco's Academy of Art University in 2005, no-one could have predicted what would happen next.
There, she became best friends with Lauren Conrad - who was already starring in MTV's Laguna Beach - and when they both transferred to the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in Los Angeles after just one term, spin-off show The Hills was born.
At 19, Heidi had fame and fortune and in 2007 she also found love, meeting 22-year-old producer Spencer Pratt at a nightclub while filming for the show.
They married in April 2009 at the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Pasadena, California - in front of the cameras, of course.
But friends and family were not behind their often tempestuous relationship, with Spencer's own sister Stephanie Pratt branding the pair 'toxic'.
It also drove a wedge between Heidi and Lauren, who accused the couple of spreading false rumours that she'd made a sex tape with ex-boyfriend Jason Wahler.
The rift was deep and permanent, and to this day Lauren refuses to talk to her former bestie.
"I’d be willing to move forward and put things behind us," Heidi recently told the #NoFilter podcast, sniping that Lauren 'holds grudges'.
"We would never be the way that we were again, but it would be fun to maybe catch up one day and be mature and be like, 'Hey that was crazy, I wish you the best,' type-of-thing. But I don’t think she would ever be ready for that."
'Speidi's' reputation took even more of a panel beating in 2009 when Heidi filed for separation and Spencer threatened to leak a supposed sex tape - only for them to get back together and renew their vows, later admitting they'd made the whole thing up for publicity.
Why? Because despite earning almost £150,000 per episode, they'd blown their £7.5million earnings in two years on £23,000 shopping sprees, £3,000 bottles of wine, £11,000-a-night bodyguards and a crystal collection worth a staggering £750,000.
They even dropped £2million on the making of Heidi's flop album, Superficial, which sold only 1,000 copies in its first week and failed to chart.
"We were immature and we got caught up," Spencer told In Touch Weekly in 2014. "We thought we were Jay Z and Beyoncé."
Even more astounding though was the reason they did it.
"The thing is, we heard that the planet was going to end in 2012," Spencer admitted to OK! magazine. "We thought, 'We have got to spend this money before the asteroid hits.'"
Flat broke, when The Hills ended in 2010 they were forced to leave LA and move into Spencer's parents house.
Then came Heidi's most erratic move yet. Desperate to look like Angelina Jolie and Britney Spears, she underwent 10 plastic surgeries in one day - a decision that almost cost her her life.
Out cold for 10 hours, she had a nose job, butt lift, brow lift, chin reduction, liposuction, a boob job and her ears pinned back before she 'died for a minute when too much Demerol - a powerful painkiller - stopped her heart beating.
"The pain was everywhere - my head felt like it had a jackhammer on it. I couldn’t talk because of my jaw and chin. When I saw Spencer, I started crying hard, and I was like, 'I feel like I wanna die right now. I’m in so much pain. I don’t know what to do," she told People magazine weeks later.
"I was in so much pain, I asked for more Demerol. And that drastically slowed my breathing. They had to rush an oxygen mask over my face; another five minutes, who knows? It was that scary-I almost felt like I was gone."
At the time, the insecure star claimed the surgery had left her feeling 'sexier' than ever. But these days, she deeply regrets taking such drastic action.
What's more, she's still suffering from the lasting health effects now.
"Cutting yourself up isn't something I'd recommend, and Demerol isn't anything to play around with. That's how Michael Jackson died," she told Paper magazine.
"I had to look at myself in the mirror every day healing, and be like, 'What did I do to myself? How did I get here? What is going on?' I basically had to hit that rock-bottom moment in my life, to realize what was important to me."
And just last year she told Cosmopolitan: "I wish I had waited and not made a decision so young because I have long-term health complications."
Meanwhile, the duo took another pop at reality TV in 2013, competing on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here and clashing with Rylan Clark-Neal.
They also starred in Wife Swap and in 2019 signed up for The Hills: New Beginnings, rejoining Brody Jenner, Audrina Patridge, Justin Bobby and Whitney Port. Lauren declined to take part.
And since then Spencer has turned his crystal obsession into a lucrative money-spinner, selling crystals and geodes at his Los Angeles store, Pratt Daddy Crystals.
According to the star, he flogs between 200 and 300 crystal pendants a week at £100-a-pop, and has grown his brand through prolific snapchatting.
He even told The Insider his business is up there with Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop.
"My new competitor is Gwyneth Paltrow selling her $85 medicine bag of tumbled rocks," he said, "while I was shopping real crystals."
And their two-year-old son Gunner already in on the gig, with his business-savvy parents turning him into a baby influencer.
