One of the most notoriously sentimental breakups of 2022 was that of model Gisele Bundchen (Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, age 42) and former American football player Tom Brady (San Mateo, California, age 45). After 13 years of marriage and with two children together, Benjamin and Vivian, aged 13 and 10, the couple decided to end their marriage after months of speculation that hadn’t stopped the news of their split. Five months after the split became official, Gisele Bundchen has appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine’s April issue and opened up about the reasons behind the decision for the first time.
Until now, the official details of their split were unknown as neither of them had spoken. There was much American media focused on the moment when Brady – after retiring from American football – decided to play again 40 days after that announcement, in February 2022. Additionally, in an interview published in Elle magazine in September, Bundchen made it clear that she didn’t like the idea of her ex-husband returning to competition: “Obviously I have my concerns: It’s a very violent sport, we have Kids and I wish he was more present.”
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An “injured free-flying bird” as she calls herself; a metaphor for his own life. “I don’t want to be restricted. I want to spread my wings and fly,” he tells Vanity Fair. An interview where you see a see-through fragile cuff and most importantly someone who shows their emotions and feelings no matter what they say. With the break still very fresh, he defends that his emotions are still on the surface: “It’s like a death and rebirth.” The model describes their divorce as “the death of a dream.” “It’s hard because you imagined your life would go a certain way and you did everything you could. As a child I believed in fairy tales. It’s nice to believe in and I’m very grateful to have done it,” she says enthusiastically.
Tom Brady at the premiere of the film, ’80 For Brady’ in Los Angeles on January 31. Frazer Harrison (Getty)
Although he fought to the end to make his dream come true, he sees failure as a defeat: “You give everything to achieve it. You give 100% of yourself and it’s heartbreaking when it ends up not being what you expected and what you worked for. The only thing you can do is do your part.” For many years, Bundchen was the highest paid model in the world, but in 2015 she decided to stop walking the catwalks to further her husband’s sports career: “When we were after Tampa moved [Florida]I had never been there. I just got here and that was my life.”
The model and athlete met on a blind date in December 2006 when she was 26 and had just broken up with actor Leonardo DiCaprio. Two months into the relationship, Brady Bundchen announced that his then-young ex-girlfriend, actress Bridget Moynahan, was three months pregnant. “It was a difficult situation for everyone,” he recalls today, almost two decades later. However, when Jack was born in 2007, he welcomed him as a ‘gift son’ and that’s when he started thinking about motherhood: ‘He came into our lives and I was grateful because he made me want to be a mother. ” In 2009 and 2012 came Benjamin and Vivian, whom he is now trying to teach about the importance of having dreams and pursuing them, “not living what you are not”.
The media assumed the chronological order of the divorce was as follows: Brady decides to retire, backs out, and the relationship falls apart. However, in the interview, Bundchen defended that marriages are not built or broken from one day to the next: “It takes years.” At the beginning of the relationship, the two had the same goal of starting a family: “Over time, we realized that we want different things and have to make choices. That doesn’t mean you don’t love that person. It just means that in order to be authentic and live the life you want, you need to have someone to connect with. It’s a dance, a balance”.
In addition to describing himself as a free, wounded bird, he also describes their relationship as a prison: “When you love someone, you don’t put them in prison and say, ‘This is the life you have to live’; You let him be who he is and when you want to fly in the same direction, that’s amazing. But despite their relationship, she will continue to support him and take care of herself to raise his two children in the best possible way: “I have always encouraged him and will always do so. If there’s one person I want to be the happiest in the world, it’s him. I want you to succeed, I want all your dreams to come true. We don’t play against each other. We are a team and that is valuable.”
Since they confirmed their split, the Brazilian model has been linked to Joaquim Valente, her jiu-jitsu instructor, which she emphatically denied during the same conversation: “Unfortunately, they will try to associate me with anyone since they are divorced He is our teacher and he is a person I admire and trust. It’s nice to have that kind of energy and it surrounds my kids.”