Tom Brady Brady and Gisele Bündchen have finalized their divorce, announcing on Friday the end of the 13-year marriage between the quarterback and the model who have risen to the top in their respective fields.
Brady and Bündchen released statements via their Instagram account on Friday morning, saying they had reached an “amicable” decision.
“The decision to end a marriage is never easy, but the distance had grown between us and while of course it is difficult to go through something like this, I consider myself blessed for the time spent together and I will always wish the best for Tom,” Bündchen wrote.
Both mentioned that their priority was their children and asked for their privacy.
“We have made the decision to end our marriage after much consideration,” Brady wrote. It is obviously difficult and painful, as is the case for all those who experience the same thing around the world.
The divorce comes during Brady’s 23rd season in the NFL and just months after the seven-time Super Bowl champion ended a weeks-long retirement. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback – who had long said he wanted to spend more time with Bündchen and his three children – announced his retirement in February, only to change his mind 40 days later.
“What more do you have to prove?” Bündchen asked her spouse on the court after his last Super Bowl victory, as Brady recounted shortly after his triumph.
Bündchen told CBS This Morning in 2017 that she was worried about her husband after he played through a concussion the previous season. The New England Patriots, for whom Brady was playing at the time, and his agent declined to comment on Bündchen’s remarks. An NFL spokesperson said there were no documents mentioning a head injury for Brady. The latter later said he preferred not to disclose his injury history.
More recently, Bündchen had claimed that the way she was portrayed in the media as desperate for her husband to retire reflected sexism.
“Of course I have concerns. It’s a very violent sport and I have my children and I would like it to be more present, the model said in an interview with ‘Elle’ magazine in September. I often had these conversations with him. But everyone has to make the decision that suits them. He has a right to happiness, too.
Bündchen and Brady met through mutual friends and were married – twice – just over two years later. They said “yes, I do” the first time in early 2009 at a Catholic church in Santa Monica, California, before celebrating a second time at their home in Costa Rica nearly two months later.
Their son Benjamin was born later in 2009, followed by their daughter Vivian in 2012. Brady also has a 15-year-old son, Jack Moynahan, from a previous relationship with actress Bridget Moynahan.
Bündchen, who was discovered by a recruiter in Brazil when she was 13, became one of the highest-paid models in the world in the 2000s and a regular in the tabloids due in part to her relationship with Leonardo DiCaprio.
