Lea Michele Posts Tribute To Cory Monteith, 9 Years After His Death

Lea Michele remembers and honors Cory Monteith every year on the anniversary of his death, and this year is no different.

Today, the actress shared a throwback photo on her Instagram Story of the two looking lovingly at one another, simply adding a red heart as the caption.

It has been nine years since Monteith tragically died from an accidental overdose at the age of 31. The actor was found in a hotel room in Vancouver on July 13, 2013, and the British Columbia Coroners Service confirmed to various outlets that his death was caused by "a mixed drug toxicity, involving heroin and alcohol."

At the time, Monteith and Michele—who starred as leads in the musical series Glee—were about a year into their relationship. The pair had made it official in 2012, while their characters, Rachel Berry and Finn Hudson, had an on-and-off romance throughout the show.

"No one knows me better than Cory," Michele told Marie Claire just months before Monteith's death. "No one knows what it's been like to go through this more than he does. Feeling like you have that net underneath you allows you to jump higher and go farther. He makes me feel like I can do anything. For the first time in my life, I feel really, really settled and happy. I feel like the luckiest girl in the world."

Michele and her other Glee costars paid tribute to Monteith in an episode following his passing. Michele also got a tattoo of his character's name, Finn, to honor him.

"We talked about a lot of things," she told Glamour UK in 2014, speaking of her relationship with Monteith. "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."

Michele—who recently landed the lead role of Fanny Brice in the Broadway production of Funny Girl—eventually found love again and in 2019 married businessman Zandy Reich.