Despite recent rhetoric regarding the former U.S. president, years before he secured the Republican nomination in the 2016 presidential election—a feat acknowledged Thursday—Donald Trump and Bill Clinton were longtime friends.

But now as a Republican contender, Trump is being criticized for his ties to the Clintons—Democrats and fellow New Yorkers who celebrated his 2005 marriage to Melania Knauss with him. Hillary Clinton was granted a front-row seat at the ceremony, and her husband later joined the reception at the Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. A snapshot taken of the Clintons and the newlywed Trumps has been widely circulated during the primary season; the wedding was dubbed the event that explains the 2016 election. During the first GOP debate in August, Trump said the couple “had no choice” but to attend his third wedding, because he had donated generously to the their charitable foundation, as well as to Clinton’s Senate campaigns and her first presidential bid. Never mind that their daughters, Ivanka Trump and Chelsea Clinton, are also known to be friends.

Nine months ago, The Washington Post reported that on a private, casual phone call last spring, Bill Clinton encouraged Trump to play a larger role in the Republican Party. That conversation reportedly took place in May 2015, a month after Hillary Clinton declared her 2016 presidential bid and just weeks before Trump announced his.

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“I like him. And I love playing golf with him,” Clinton said in a May 2012 interview with CNN, according to transcripts. He spoke highly of Trump, despite the real estate tycoon’s prominent role in the so-called “birther” movement, wherein he spent months publicly questioning President Barack Obama’s original birth certificate. Trump, speaking to Fox News earlier that same year, said he thought Clinton was “a really good guy.”