In 2003, Cosima De Vito was forced to walk away from Australian Idol. This is her life now.

If you're a millennial of a certain age, chances are you remember where you were when Cosima De Vito announced that she was stepping away from Australian Idol.

A fan favourite, she'd just made the top three, alongside Shannon Noll and eventual winner Guy Sebastian. Then, it all came crashing down.

"I'd like to thank all my supporters and the Australian public for believing in me. I've been extremely humbled by the support you have shown me. Unfortunately, I have a temporary condition that's affecting my voice. It's forced me to make the decision to leave the competition," De Vito said on live television, her voice shaking.

Gasps and cries of shock rang out, both in the studio audience and in lounge rooms across the nation.

"But the next few weeks are going to be very, very intense with touring and recording and I'm not sure that I am going to be able to give 100 per cent and that my voice is going to hold up. These two great guys are ready to take on the final challenge," De Vito continued, gesturing to Sebastian and Noll.

"From the bottom of my heart, I wish you both the best of luck and I cherish your friendship, your love and your support. With the right care, I know my voice will get better and I'll be back to normal in just a few weeks. So the journey isn't going to end for me."

Now, 22 years on from the moment De Vito left Australian Idol, the singer is getting ready to make her return to television. And this time, it's not a singing competition. Rather, De Vito will be competing on the revamped reality competition series, The Traitors Australia, which is set to be hosted by former Big Brother Australia host Gretel Killeen. Oh, the nostalgia of it all! If that wasn't enough? She'll be going up against her one-time Idol judge, Ian "Dicko" Dickson for the win.

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De Vito will be competing against a slew of other reality stars, including Big Brother alum Tully Smyth, as well as Australian Survivor stars Kirby Bentley and Shane Gould, Bachelor alum like Alex Nation and Keira Maguire, and MAFS' star Cam Merchant, among many others.

But 2003 was, you know… quite some time ago. Here's what De Vito has been up to in the years since she stepped off the Idol stage.

Cosima De Vito's life and career after Australian Idol.

After leaving Australian Idol, De Vito produced a number one hit in 2004 with her cover of Cold Chisel's "When the War Is Over" which she had performed on the show.

It was a big year for the singer, but not without its struggles. After withdrawing from Australian Idol, De Vito found it difficult to negotiate a record deal, which prompted her to fund her and produce her own debut album, Cosima, with the financial assistance of her family. Still, she flew to Los Angeles, determined to make her dreams a reality, and worked with Oscar-nominated songwriter Diane Warren, who wrote 10 of the 11 tracks on her album. Upon release, Cosima hit number 2 on the ARIA charts and was quickly certified gold, but fell off the Top 50 soon after.

There's also been some drama with her former Australian Idol stars — namely Mark Holden, Paulini Curuenavuli and Guy Sebastian — along the way, but in the interest of leaving the past in the past, let's not get too into it.

Over the years, De Vito has produced two more albums, starred in the musical Hair, and sung at too-many-to-count award and sporting shows and galas, both on screen and off.

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However, in more recent years, music has taken a bit of a backseat in De Vito's life to something else: motherhood.

De Vito and husband Augusto De Romanis are parents to their seven-year-old daughter, Amelia.

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In a 2023 interview, De Vito told Mamamia that Amelia is much more of an extrovert than she is, and that she may have aspirations to follow in her mum's footsteps one day.

"She sings all the time. And she's very, very loud," De Vito told Mamamia with a laugh. "Like every five-year-old, she says she wants to be a ballerina... She can be whatever she wants to be."

The love story between De Vito and husband De Romanis is a special one. After being single for around 10 years, a then 38-year-old De Vito had just started the process of doing IVF on her own when she met De Romanis.

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"It comes when you least expect and when you're open... I was wanting to be a mum," De Vito told Mamamia in 2023. "And I'm like, 'Well, if I look back on my life, my biggest regret won't be that I didn't get married, it will be because I didn't become a mum.' So I had already resigned to the fact that I wasn't going to meet anyone and then he popped around."

"When you're happy with your life and you're content, they have to fit in with you, not the other way around."

The Traitors Australia will premiere in 2026.

Image: Network 10.