June 10, 2024 • 51 mins
On March 14th, 2024, Amy & T. J. were featured guests at an intimate event at Soho House in Lower Manhattan. "In Conversation with Amy & T.J." marked Amy & T.J.'s first time speaking in front of a live audience as a couple, as well as their first public event since their relationship became widely known a year and a half ago.
"If there is only one episode of our podcast that people will ever listen to, we'd want it to be this one." -Amy
This is Part 1 of the unedited recording of the Soho House event.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Good evening everyone. My name is Martin Ekachuku. What works
were your host for the evening?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'd like to introduce you to in conversations with Amy
and TJ. Thank you, thank you. Hello everyone. Wow, there's
a bright light on me. I haven't been under lights
like these in well a year and a half. Should
(00:29):
be familiar, but somehow it's not.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
We are taping a podcast tonight, and usually when we
tape a podcast, we're in a small room, a little studio,
with just two people in the room. And we love them,
two producers of ours. I think one of them is
floating around here tonight. But as wonderful as they are
to us for what we need to do and want
(00:56):
to do, tonight, we felt we needed a little more
support and love than just two people could give us.
And that's why you all to hear.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
So thank you, thank you for coming out. And I
have to say thank you. It's not just the lights.
I mean, we're nervous. We've been doing this podcast, as
we mentioned, in this small room and it feels safe
and small, like no one's listening. But we haven't been
in front of a group of people. We've been hermits,
(01:24):
we've been in hiding in a lot of ways for
a long time. So I haven't seen you this nervous ever.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Well, because I fully expect that somebody in the back
of this room is going to be throwing tomatoes at us.
And no, no, I say that somewhat jokingly, but we
have been in a business with twenty five plus years.
We've spoken in front of crowds before on TV, before
all this, and this is probably one of the smaller
(01:51):
audiences we've had in front of us live, so we
shouldn't be nervous, but for whatever reason, we are scared.
Listen and it's the truth, and I hope you all
just bear with us a little bit. But this is
a big deal for us to be in front of
an audience again, because it hasn't happened in almost a year.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Nat, that's right, and we want to thank all of
you for coming out, and we also want to point
out that we because this is such a big deal
and this is kind of our coming out in a way,
we just in public again once again. We wanted our
parents here with us tonight. We couldn't have imagined doing
(02:34):
this without them, and so they have been our biggest
supporters always throughout our entire lives, but especially during this
past year and a half. So we thought it was
a given that they would be here. But sadly they
are not. And it's not because they didn't want to
be here. There was actually just a bizarre turn of
events with both of our parents. I know your father.
(02:57):
We got a FaceTime from him last week and he
had well he's seventy six years old, and he said,
anytime your doctor says you need to go to the
cardiologist immediately, there's something wrong. So he was not medically
cleared to come here to fly at all. So that
is the only reason why t and Mary are not
here from West Memphis.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Mama Roback and Papa Robach aren't here because Mama Robaq
took a took a nasty spill a couple of months ago,
shattered her shoulder and she has been recovering and the
doctor told her also that she couldn't travel, she couldn't fly.
So I actually call bullshit on both of them.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
See nice excuse we have got.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
We got to a point seriously all that that we
got a mindset that every time we walked down the street,
we thought every single person that we passed despised us.
We actually thought every single person hated us. Now we're intellectually,
we know most people don't know who we are, don't
(03:58):
give a damn who we are. And still I mean everybody, men, women, children,
We thought everybody hated us. I could on a subway
platform a five year old could look at me wrong,
and I'm like, let's take the next train. I don't
like to wait. This kid is eyeballed.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
If any of you out there are Game of Thrones fans,
you'll understand this reference. I'm not even kidding. I we
felt a little bit like Circe walking through the streets
of Manhattan. Shame, shame, shame. I mean that is where
it was that a certain movie kept our heads down
in our pace very quick, and that is how we
had been living for over a year.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
And so that's why we can't say enough how big
of a deal it is for you all to be here.
And this should be a safe place for us, right
this is Soho House. Yeah, as they all sneaking recordings
right now, it's supposed to be a safe place. It's
not just because it's intimate and the Soho House, but
we have a bunch of familiar faces in the room
(04:55):
here with us tonight, a lot of close friends and
some family as well. I know, I don't know where
she is. I know Analise is here. Oh, there's the crew.
Her daughter, Analise is seventeen year old. You will as
she well, yeah, she's told everybody where she's she just
got accepted into college.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
And yeah she's going to the University of Colorado Boulder.
Just got the news this week. And then there is
Sabine TJ's eleven year old daughters sitting right next to Annalise.
And we've got friends. This is the friend and family
zone right over there. I so you guys actually even
have a velvet rope separating you from everyone else. Wow,
(05:34):
you're welcome.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
But thank you all so much for me here and
we want to And I haven't seen him yet. Doctor Guardier.
You all know Jeff Gardier. Where is doctor Guardier. He's
in here, somewhere back here, but there he is.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
There is.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Doctor Gardier has been a dear friend, somebody we've worked
with for twenty years in the business. He is known
as America's psychologist. And I assure you all, by the
time you all leave here tonight, you all will want
a little therapy. And I mean this by before you
all leave out here, you all will be questioning some
of the choices you are making in your life right now.
(06:12):
That's not our intent to like scare you or tell
you doing something wrong. But as we go through and
talk about what we want to talk about tonight, that
will come up. And two things in particular we want
to hit on tonight. One of them, you all are
going to be the first to hear us say something
we have not said publicly. You're going to hear us
issue a thank you tonight publicly that even for us
(06:38):
not too long ago, we would have thought unfathomable that
we would dare be saying thank you and being grateful.
So more on that in just a bit. But the
second thing we want to talk about tonight is yes, shame,
you know.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
And obviously we just discussed the public shaming that we've
experienced and it humiliating and I mean we were flogged
and still are here and there and everywhere. But that's
not what we want to talk about. We don't want
to go back to that. We don't want to discuss that.
We actually want to talk about the fact that the
public shaming actually wasn't our undoing. It was the private
(07:17):
shame that we're going to discuss. And we may be
so bold as to say, we bet every single one
of you in here knows exactly what we're talking about.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
And we're talking about that shame that causes you to hide,
that shame that causes you to pretend you're something you're not,
that shame that causes you to try to be something
else because you're hiding. You're scared you're going to be
found out. You're scared somebody is going to think you're
not enough. It's that private shame that was our undoing.
Is that private shame that causes us to hide? Well,
(07:53):
you all tonight we are done hiding.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Officially told you we were coming out, coming out in
a big way. And when we talk about that shame,
we don't. We weren't exposed, and this is an interesting concept.
We weren't exposed for being together. We were exposed initially
(08:22):
for not actually living the lives that we were portraying
to the world. And so because we weren't living those
lives that we were showing everyone, we weren't able to
actually expose our relationship.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
I saw some of you all nad your head as
soon as she said, we're not living the lives that
we were putting on and the lives we had. Look
I we are. We got two pretty impressive resumes between
the two of us. We both honor students broadcast degrees.
We both were in cable network news before the aidge
(09:00):
of thirty. We have been called upon all of the
country by a number of organizations to be a part
of it. We've made millions of millions of dollars in
this business. Hell. October fourteenth, twenty twenty two was officially
Amy Robot Day at the University of Georgia.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
I'm sure they celebrated it last year. Yeah, probably not.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
I actually am the recipient of the Young Alumni Award
at the University of Arkansas, and I was the celebrity
hall caller at a Razorback football game. Now up here,
that might not mean much to y'all, I assure you,
it's a really big deal where I'm from.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
But what wasn't attached to those resumes, or what was
attached to those resumes, Well.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
What's attached to them now? For divorces. Between the two
of us sitting on this stage, there are now four divorces,
and this is where the private shame. We had very
perfect looking families and perfect looking lives, and we were
(10:09):
guilty at times of putting out an image of our
lives that we knew was not true.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah, I'll take that one. I can point specifically to
July of twenty twenty two. I posted a picture with
a beautiful sunset behind me, and if you saw it,
I believe it said goodnight Athens was the was the caption.
(10:36):
And I was in Greece, and you saw that picture
and it looked like a rosy picture of a beautiful marriage,
just picture perfect in every way. And I posted it
because I actually got a text from a friend who said,
some of us are concerned. We're not seeing pictures of
(10:56):
you two like we used to on your Instagram. And
I immediate lee was so afraid that anyone I knew
thought would know or would think that something was wrong.
I didn't want anyone to think anything was wrong, and
so I posted that picture. The problem is everything was wrong.
When I posted that picture, I was almost sure my
(11:18):
marriage was over, and yet I didn't want anyone to know,
and no one did know for a while. And I
know you have a very similar story.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
If anybody followed me, it was obvious for a couple
of years leading up to that that I essentially had
no images or wasn't putting out anything related to my marriage.
But beyond that, I moved out of my marital home
on August twenty fourth, twenty twenty two, started a new
(11:51):
lease at a new place. I was August twenty fourth
and divorce was underway. August twenty fifth. I went to
work and got on TV with my wedding band on
August twenty sixth, Wedding Bank on the whole month of September,
wedding Band on TV October November. Same thing. And I
(12:14):
wouldn't wear it anywhere else. I would just go to
the studio, go into my dressing room where I kept it,
put it on for the show, take it off. I
didn't want anybody to know that I had another failed marriage,
and I wasn't ready for anybody to know that, And
I went even went so far as every morning at
(12:38):
GMA Good Morning America, there's a producer that will send
you an email asking what time you want your car
pickup to be to bring you to studio, and they
have your home address on file so they just going
to add what time you want it tomorrow, and me
usually when I work and if i'm certainly if I'm
anchoring Good Morning America, I would have a pick up
at four four fifteen in the morning. And four months
(13:02):
I didn't update my address and I would walk out
of my new home at three forty five am four am,
and I would walk downtown the fifteen plus minutes over
to my marital my place i'd moved out of, and
I would sneak behind cars or behind the building. Because
(13:26):
the driver was parked at the door, he knew I
wasn't coming out. I was dipping and hiding, trying to
make sure he didn't know that something was up. I
went to that type of extreme just to make sure
you all didn't know that I was a failure in
a personal aspect of my life.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Yeah, and I think when you look at Instagram, everyone
does look super happy. And I was one hundred percent
guilty of that as well. And I mentioned that one
photo I took which I still feel guilty about. But
I looked back, and I looked back and just saw
what I was posting versus what I was living, and
it couldn't have been more different. But the truth is,
(14:09):
and I think this is where I believe there's a
lot of commonality with all of us. I wanted my
life to actually be what it looked like on Instagram
so badly. I was also on my second marriage. I
had invested, you know, so much of my heart, my children,
his children. I wanted it. I needed it to be
(14:32):
what it looked like. I needed it to be what
it seemed, And mostly for my children, I wanted there
to be this picture perfect family that they could trust
and count on, especially because this wasn't even their father
or their biological brothers. So I'd already had upheaval once.
(14:54):
I didn't want to do it again. But if I'm
being honest, the other reason why I wanted so badly
my Instagram feed to be my life is that my ego.
I didn't want to be a failure. I didn't want
to have another failed marriage. I wanted to be the
(15:15):
perfect wife and the perfect mother, and two failed marriages,
that's I mean. I remember when I told my mom,
I said, my daughter has dark hair and blue eyes,
my oldest one. And I said, unfortunately, Mom, you have
a granddaughter who looks like Elizabeth Taylor and a daughter
who's becoming Elizabeth Taylor, and it just I desperately didn't
(15:35):
want it to be true, and so I put up
a front. I pretended, I played along. I wanted to believe,
and I wanted you to believe. I wanted all of
you to believe that it was true.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
How many did Elizabeth Taylor end up with husbands? Seven?
So you about halfway? But the luve Okay, that was
not a wedding announcement. Okay, y'all, it was not, but
it was the same. I had had a picture perfect
looking family, but I went to extremes. I didn't tell
(16:08):
my mama I was getting divorced. She had no idea
until everything blew up. There was I mean, Robot knew,
of course, but there was only one person in all
that time that I sat down, looked in their eyes
and said that the divorce was happening, and that one
(16:29):
person is in the room tonight, Sabine.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Obviously it's you know, this is the divorce itself. Are divorces.
Those were the painful moments. We were struggling through that
privately in so many ways, and so we weren't ready
to publicly talk about that anyone who's been through a
field relaselationship and especially a failed marriage knows when children
(17:03):
are involved, it is a completely different ballgame. And so yes,
part of it is ego, of course, wanting to keep
it private, but so much of it is also protecting
your children and not wanting them to be exposed to
the publicity that ensues. Ironically, it all blew up in
our face because because we weren't transparent with what was
actually happening in our relationships before this relationship started, everything
(17:29):
got completely blown out of proportion, and every single person,
every single outlet that wrote about us got it wrong,
completely wrong, and nearly I would say most people who
read what was written believed it. I understand why, but
it couldn't have been further from the truth. But there
(17:49):
was real pain and real emotion behind everything that was
happening before before that tabloid followed us.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
I'm back now, I'm good. Now, I'm good. That was
just that was just a blip. I'm fine. One of
my boys, Charles is here. He's like I thought he
was about to walk out the room. He's signed up
for this.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
I need a drink, but I.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Did I I Sat, I was talking about Sat sa
Bean down and and Soho at her favorite restaurant, Bo Cafe,
which has now moved that location. But we sat down
and that summer and I explained it to her and
I was shocked at how well she took it and
didn't seem very surprised at all. That could have should
have been telling. Uh. Then we got ice cream and
everything was cool. She we just had to be talking
(18:46):
yesterday and I told her I had a surprise. She
got out of school, had a text message. I said, hey,
I got some news for you, and in typical like
her daddy fashion, I was She said it's good news,
bad news. I said, just come on over after school.
I'll explain. And the news was only that she was
going to be allowed in tonight. Right, she's the only
kid in here, so appreciate your Soho house for making
(19:06):
an exception for my little one. But she I told
her what was up, and I did. I explain to her, sweetheart,
if it's bad news, then I will probably invite you
to your favorite restaurant for a meal to break the news.
And it dawned on me, Oh damn, the last time
I did that?
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Oh yeah, not funny?
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Was that too? Some but she was. We were working
to get families and kids settled for months before we
announced or or told anybody else that we were getting divorced,
and of course everything got blown up the way it did.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
And so we have spent the better part of this
past year and a half trying to make amends. We
recognize that we can explain why we didn't tell people
what was going on in our private lives. We can
explain why we weren't transparent, but that doesn't take away
the pain that this caused the people who we love
(20:07):
the most, our children, our parents, our friends. So many
people were personally impacted by our lack of transparency, our
unwillingness to keep it real, be honest with ourselves and
with the world, and the people who you know, trusted
us each and every morning. We were not transparent, bottom line,
(20:30):
and we should have been, and we could have been,
and looking back now, we wish we had been. That
is our biggest folly, and we have been apologizing and
trying to make amends to the people who we love
the most. But we also know that, and I don't
think we've said this before, we want to apologize to
our viewers and to our fans and to the people
(20:52):
to this many people who've supported us throughout our careers,
who trusted us. We were not forthcoming. We were not
trans parent about what our private lives had been like
that led us to the point where we could actually
be a couple and be accepted as a couple. We
did not, We did not make the right decisions when
we look back now, and let's.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Be clear here we talk about transparency, let me make
this as transparent as we can. We didn't mean to
fall in love. We didn't expect to fall in love.
We didn't even realize we were falling in love, and
giving all that was on the line, you could even
(21:35):
argue we didn't want to fall in love, which seems
like an odd thing to say about the woman you're
sitting on stage with that you claim to be in
love with. I don't want to be in love with
you right back at you. That's a weird thing to think.
But we didn't. It wasn't what we were planning for.
(21:56):
But it happened. It did, it had and at work.
I know we're the first ever to fall in love
it or I get it, but it happened, and we
are grateful for it. Now and the journey that's brought
us here in front of you we can be grateful for.
(22:16):
But we believe anybody in this room you know it
when you find it, that thing that you know it,
and you gotta go for it. When that rare thing
happens in maybe it's love, but when it's right there
(22:38):
in front of your, life is too short and you
have to go for it. We're not at all endorsing
anybody going for it at all costs. You don't go
for it, and everybody else be damned. That's not what
we're saying, and that is not what we did. We
absolutely made missteps along the way, but there are reasons
(23:02):
and experiences we've had in our lives that informed the
decision we made, which is a very deliberate one to
be together, and a part of that is life is
short and you gotta go for it.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
You know. That's my language. And TJ talked about our
resumes and how we got to where we we ended up,
which was at the height of our career at the
number one morning show, and we worked our asses off
to get there almost thirty years for me and same
with TJ. And that success came at a huge price
(23:40):
to our health. I think it's fair to say, and
we'll go through it a little bit because this is
all going to tie into our theme. But our jobs
almost killed us. I had heart surgery that I don't
really talk about in twenty eleven. It was a four
(24:02):
hour heart surgery. I had a dangerous arrhythmia, and my
cardiologist they can't tell you how or why, but clearly
stress most likely contributed to that condition. And two years
later I was diagnosed with breast cancer and to have
heart surgery and breast cancer two years apart, working ninety
(24:22):
hour weeks with the pressure of network news. I don't
think that's a coincidence. You have a story as well.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Look, my doctor found a A and I have normality
in my heart, I should say, And it alarmed him
to the point that it alarmed me. Right, you don't
ever want to be at the doctor's alfice. And he
looks at your chart and goes, what the fuck? All right,
you don't want that. But he was shocked. He's like,
(24:51):
this hasn't been found before. You're thirty eight years old,
and somebody should have caught this at some point in life.
So he was concerned. Send me to a cardiologist at
the age of thirty eight. Now, I don't know if
you all been to a cardiologist's office before, but the
waiting room is full of people seventy five and older
and I'm sitting in there at thirty eight, and they
were like, oh, no, sweetheart, you go, you go first.
If you in here, you must be in trouble.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
I was thirty eight too. Wow, that's something we did
not want to have in common.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
And the other thing, this doctor diagnosed me in twenty
fifteen with moderately severe depression. I didn't know what that meant,
and I didn't do a thing to address it for
four or five years, and ultimately this doctor, on my
third visit to him with the same issues, he dumped
(25:39):
me as a patient. Right. I didn't know you could
do that. He dumped me as a patient. He literally
told me this, don't come back to me, quit your job,
move back to Atlanta, or you're gonna kill yourself. He
was done with me. Wow, And I said, okay, went
(26:01):
right back to doing the same things I was doing
that got me in that doctor's office in the first place.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
So if network news in this business itself almost killed us,
I would argue that ABC News saved my life twice.
If it hadn't been for Good Morning America at ABC
News in twenty thirteen, I would not have found my
(26:27):
breast cancer. I'm sure a lot of people know my story.
I won't belabor it, but long story short, I was
asked to do an on air mammogram at the age
of forty, perfectly healthy and fit, no family history. I
was like fine. It ended up revealing that I had
stage two invasive breast cancer. The cancer had already spread
to my lymp nodes. I ended up with a double mistectomy,
(26:50):
six months of chemotherapy for surgeries. And the truth is
I would not have had that mammogram at the time.
It was recommended that I would could wait till I
was fit fifty. So can you imagine if I had
waited ten years to have that mammogram. I don't think
i'd be sitting on this stage right now. And I
think it's very fair to say that that work assignment
(27:12):
that ABC News gave me saved my life. And I
would also say that in twenty twenty, ABC News saved
my life because that was It was the summer of
twenty twenty when I got the call from my executive
producer for GMA three the third hour of Good Morning America,
(27:32):
and she asked me what I thought about bringing on TJ.
Holmes as my co host, and I was ecstatic That
day led me to being on the stage right here
with all of you, with the love of my life,
and gave me a second chance at life.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
I got the call not long after she did asked
me to join JMA three, and I'll have you tell
because I got off the phone and immediately called you
and you were surprised by my tone and my reaction
at the time.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Well, it speaks to your level of grace and humility
and just who you are as a person. I thought, Look,
we had been good friends, really good friends for six
years and loved working together, but we never expected this
to happen. We never expected it ABC News to put
us together, and so I was jumping for joy. I thought,
(28:33):
oh my god, I get to work with my favorite
person at ABC News, one of my great friends. This
is amazing. And he was like, I don't know, I
don't know if I want to do this. I don't
know if this is good. I don't know if we
should do this. I was like, why are you like,
what where's the hesitancy? And he didn't want I had
started the show during the pandemic and it had done gangbusters,
(28:56):
but they wanted to elevate it to the next level,
beyond and out outside side of just pandemic conversations and
really make it into a show. So I was excited
to bring on this amazing person who I knew was
going to bring the personality and the fun and the
smarts and all of the things he brings to the
table to just truly elevate the show. He was concerned
(29:16):
that somehow I would feel like he was taking over
or stepping on my toes, or it was my show
and he was coming in and taking some of my thunder.
But see, that's the cool thing about working with you.
This is a cutthroat business and we've been in it
for a long time, and I have never worked with
anyone side by side who I felt more trust with
(29:40):
because typically everyone's in it for themselves. They want to
get a leg up, they want to show boat, they
want to be the one, they want the spotlight on them.
The two of us made each other better, and you
make me better for sure. And so to know that
this person who I trusted completely who I have so
(30:03):
probably too much fun with on the set was going
to be my co anchor. It was just a no brainer.
But it was incredibly sweet and kind, and again speaks
to your character because I never even considered that it
was you infringing on my show ever.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
That show when I joined in twenty twenty, the summer
fall of twenty twenty, that those were probably the darkest
days of my adult life, and she pulled me out
of it. I think darkest days. I talked about being
diagnosed with moderately severe depression, but she saw and I
(30:52):
talked to her, and I didn't have to talk to
her every day. Sometimes she just saw it. But thoughts
of suicide, the abuse of alcohol. I didn't realize how
bad off I was, and it's it's pretty bad that
I can I can tell you it's about a five
point one five point two mile walk from my home
(31:16):
downtown to the ABC office on sixty sixth Street on
the Upper West Side, because I would walk back and
forth in the middle of the night because I didn't
want to go home and I would just walk the streets.
I can tell you there's a there's a bench on
(31:37):
fourteenth Street just west of Union Square, where I have
actually slept that night, I was the best dressed homeless
man you have ever seen in your life. With the home, yes,
but that those were off awful days from me. And
(32:02):
I was going in every day with this one. And
she is seeing me deteriorate, She's seeing me not get help.
She's seeing me the way nobody else was. And it
became an issue where I would leave home to go
to the studio. But what it really felt like is
I was leaving home and going home, which was Amy
(32:25):
Roboch who was introduced me to authors. She got me
obviously running, which helps with depression. She wouldn't let me
slide on anything. And I credit her, as this is
not dramatic. I credit her for literally helping save my life.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
You saved your life, you did, and we became best friends.
Like I said, we were good friends. But once we
started co anchoring that show together, it was amazing to
watch you transform to be the best version of yourself.
And I knew your heart, and I knew your beautiful mind,
(33:10):
and I knew you were struggling. And sometimes you just
need a friend. Sometimes you just need one person to
believe in you.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
You know, folks, this is There were times we go
to work it's five sometimes we're doing jim Ay. We'd
be in the office at five am and we are
literally side by side until eleven am when we leave
the studio. We leave the studio, go for a run
on the West Side Highway, a training run, and then
stopped it. Stop it, drift in on the West Side
Highway and have a beer after the run. From five
(33:39):
am to sometimes one, two three, we are right next
to each other. And this was happening day after day
after day, and so my good friend became my best
friend and then became everything and we knew we had
(34:00):
something specialist friends, and apparently.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
ABC knew it too. They saw the chemistry. Yeah, ABC
was our e harmony. No no, no, we didn't go in
and beg.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Please let us do this show together her agents and reps,
and they weren't called and saying you got to get
these guys on the show. It came randomly, completely out
of nowhere that we got those calls. They made the
decision on their own. They saw something and they put
us together. And I think after they put us together,
things then really ramped up. In December of twenty twenty one,
(34:43):
another changed because one of our colleagues decided to go
to space, and this really got it, really kicked our
careers at ABC and our partnership into high gear and
were talking about s Of course that's Michael Straighthand you
explain how this, well, because light you're going to space
(35:07):
plays into this story.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Well, we would probably I was. I was sent down
to Texas to be on the ground when he was
going up. And we love Stray, We go way back.
He's one of our favorite people on the planet. He's
just as kind and sweet and amazing as he seems
on television, maybe even more so in person, even more so.
So I was down there and I was waiting, and
(35:30):
the launch got delayed for weather. And so because I
think it was set for a Thursday, Thursday, yes, December ninth,
that was supposed to go. This is a big deal.
So all the big GMA folks were going to be
handling the special report and I was going to be
the reporter on the ground. Well, it got delayed and
so it ended up being on a Saturday. Well, a
lot of those folks don't really like to work weekends,
(35:53):
so they decided to put the b team in charge,
and so instead of just being a correspondent, TJ went
New York, I came from Texas, and we co hosted
the special report, which is a really big deal in
network news to be able to break into programming and
do the special report, and especially with one of our
favorite people going into space, we were personally invested. So
(36:15):
we didn't do your typical, you know, Dunda dun Dom
special report. We were just emotional and we were just
being us. We were being dog gulls, drag.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
I was like, oh my god, Oh my god, what's happening.
Like I was acting like a crazy friend who was
worried about her friend flying into space, not this network correspondent.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
And yeah, she said this on the air after it
was up and it was supposed to be coming back down.
She was looking at the wrong thing that was coming down.
She thought it was strays like and she said this
on the air, they're coming in hot.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
I mean I was. It was like I was on
my couch watching Versus. I forgot I had a microphone
on and I was actually supposed to be telling everyone
it was all good and it was okay, but I
was freaking out. But it ended up being a really
beautiful emotional moment that I think was different than anything else,
and a light bulb went off in a lot of
the executives head when they saw this is special, this
(37:09):
is cool. So they started to send us all over
the place, all over the world together, all over the country,
and we started going on assignments and big assignments, fun assignments,
from the Oscars to the Queen's Jubilee. They started to
realize that we were actually entertaining and informing at the
same time and had a lot of fun and hopefully
(37:29):
if any of you all watched any of those events,
had some fun with us watching.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
So we are now again. I gave you the schedule
that we had spent all this time together anything the show,
and now they're sending us everywhere together, time after time,
with this London, or Landown, New Orleans, Houston, being in
the Oscars, we were everywhere now spending all this time together.
In our personal lives that we mentioned that shame, right,
(37:54):
that private shame, not letting anybody know and letting anybody
in to what was happening. But we were right next
to each other going through all of that in those
times together and We don't know, because we get asked
all the time. When did things start to shift from
friendship to knowing you had something more? And if you
(38:15):
will if we just did a one, two three and
both of us answered at the same time, I'm not
sure if we'd have the same answer. No, that we
would scream them out.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
I don't know how to describe it other than because
we had been now at this point friends for eight
years and just friends. This is me being totally honest.
He's too cool for me, Like I would never he
would never have been anybody I would have fought to
date because I don't know. I just you were a
little too dangerous for me.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
I don't know, Wow, I just we will edit that
out of the poet.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Actually, I actually felt safe being his best galpal because
it just never felt like anything.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
It just it.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
I really considered him. I used to say you were
like my brother, and that's exactly so it was weird.
It's gross, and then it's weird when all of a
sudden you feel like suddenly a look lingers, or you
start to feel something change. You're like, this is strange,
this is weird, and so you deny it and you
don't talk about it at all, and you don't even
(39:18):
acknowledge it to yourself, and you start realizing. I think
for me, one of the big moments was I got
so excited on Sunday night when I got to go
to work on Monday, and on Fridays, right, I didn't
have the Sunday scaries. I had the Sunday like excitement.
I was so excited, and then Friday we'd be like,
oh bye, you know, and so you start to like,
(39:38):
that's not normal, and so eventually you start to you
start to realize that you're feeling something, but truly do
not even admit it to yourself versus the other person.
But slowly, slowly, slowly, it kind of became undeniable. And
I can say this much. TJ told me that he
(39:59):
loved me before we ever even like I don't like
I ever like touched your hand. I mean, we never
held hands. There was nothing physical, And I never in
my life could have imagined feeling that kind of love
for someone where it never started out as lust, and
it actually wasn't even lust. It was just this deep
(40:21):
foundation of friendship, love, respect. We had been in the
trenches together on television in a very high stress situation
in a network newsroom, and we had been there for
each other in our darkest moments. We started leaning on
each other in so many emotional ways, and it was
just there was such a depth to what we had.
(40:44):
It was so different than anything I've ever experienced. So
it was so gutting to me to have what got
exposed in November to somehow be some like lustfull affair.
It was the complete opposite of that.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
To the point earlier, you know, we actually would get
offended and get onto people anytime they suggested something was
going on between the two of us, because it really
we actually responded like my sister. We did that for
the longest and people, we took such pride in our
friendship that when things threatened it, we defended it. And
(41:29):
love falling in love was a threat to our friendship.
We talked about that a lot. Is Hey, I whatever
we cannot, I cannot lose you as the friend that
I have to go explore something. And ultimately this went
on for months, months of deliberate and there was no acknowledgment.
(41:52):
I'm the one that finally made hey, hey, look at sister.
We got to talk.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
He did. He made me talk. I don't think I
ever would have acknowledged it.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
We just like just played us keep looking at each
other crazy and did not want to talk about it.
And I think we did realize what was at stake.
Maybe we didn't know we were would be playing with
fire and it wasn't necessary because things were great. Gig
was going great, show was going great. Life wasn't going great.
(42:23):
Our personal lives weren't going.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
Great, that's right. And so when we were having these conversations,
and I think I fell in love with you even
more because I knew this wasn't a shtick or something
you just said. You said to me at one point,
I love you so much that if all I ever
get to be in your life is your best friend,
that's enough. And I knew you meant it. And I
(42:48):
got to a point where my cancer journey played a
huge role in my decision. And this was a deliberate,
thoughtful moment for me. I asked myself, if your cancer
came back and you knew you had one year to live,
(43:11):
how would you spend it? And it wasn't even close.
I would spend it with TJ. And I have preached
and I've given speeches to breast cancer survivors and thrivers
and patients and anyone who's gone through anything life threatening
or had anything where you thought you might die, whatever
(43:31):
it is, you learn that tomorrow is not guaranteed. All
you have is today, and you have one life to live.
I used to joke, I try to live my life
like a country music song. I mean, it's just this
like in real time, realizing that this is your shot,
this is your chance, this is your moment, and you
(43:52):
don't know what tomorrow is going to bring. And that
for me was my epiphany. That was my light bulb,
and that was me living finally truthfully by admitting that
I wanted to be with you. That was my moment.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
We mentioned shame and private shame and public shame, and
we still have some work to do, doctor Gardier, maybe
on dealing with public shaming and walking down the street
thinking everybody hates us, despises us, thinks we're the worst
people in the world. We were getting better about that.
(44:40):
The private shame is done, and for a while we
carried a private shame even about being together now like
it continues for a different reason. Right we were had
a private shame that we weren't living the lives people
(45:01):
thought we were in our marriages, and now we carried
it over again to not being transparent fully about us
because we're worried if they don't really like us, it's
not going to support us. They don't, right, they don't.
They don't like to see us together. That stops you all.
(45:25):
I am in love with this woman and we are
planning a life together, and and if you don't like it,
I'm not going to finish this. I got nothing. I'm
not that dude. There are those sweet words she said,
(45:45):
I'm capable of love. I can't feel that one in.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
But you mentioned the authors that you leaned on, that
I leaned on, and that you leaned on. We found
a lot of solace in a book by Matthew Kelly.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
You all know this book. It's called Life Is Messy. Yeah, shocker.
It's on our nightstand, all right. But there's a quote
in there that I'm going to leave you all with
in a second. But before I give that to you,
we said we wanted to give a thank you tonight.
(46:23):
And again this is something doctor Guardia, I'm gonna ask
you about in a second. But we never would have
imagined that we would sit and again you want We
haven't done this even privately express to each other gratitude,
but tonight we do want to say thank you to
(46:44):
ABC News, the folks that you read the headlines that
they want to fire us, or they fired us, or
don't want us around. And we'll be honest that we
were angry as hell at ABC News for quite a while,
but only with time and with perspective, we can appreciate
(47:09):
them recognizing something in us, putting us together in the
first place, set us on a course to get better
health and happiness to where we can come out of
it now healthier and happier than we've ever been in
our adult lives. Our daughters are over there sitting next
to each other. We have our friends in the room
(47:29):
supporting us, and we have a group of you all
willing to come out, and not a single one of
you has thrown a tomato yet, so as we were angry,
and it turns out that that moment it never you'll
(47:50):
have been there. If anybody over here over the age
of thirty thirty five has dealt with it, when you're
going through it, it never ever seems like you're going
to come out of it. On the other side, it
never ever feels like this is actually going to be
a good thing for you later. We could never imagine
that them putting us together in the first place would
(48:11):
put us in a position to where they want to
fire us to then put us into a position that
we are now to be better than we have ever
been in our dot line. Thank you, ABC News.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
Thank you, James Goldston, Thank you, Cat mackenzie.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
James Goldson's the former ABC News president. He had to
sign off on us being together. Kat McKenzie, executive producer
of Good Morning America, Justin Dile, Good Morning America, Jimmy three,
Justin Dile and executive there. These were the three folks
who made that call. We are saying thank you, and
we mean it genuinely and sincerely. Thank you to ABC
(48:51):
News for putting us on this course. And I guess
it has a religious connotation, but this ABC News became
the instrument of our salvation.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
It did yeah twice now for me, so thank you,
double thank you for me.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
We are going to ask doctor Guardia to come up
here in just a second. And while that's going to
happen here in a moment, we did talk about we
wanted to give you this, this quote, Life is Messy.
Anybody know the book Life is Messy? Oh? Wow, Wow,
glad to see things are going so well for you guys.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
Nikki knows it because of me. That's the only reason.
Apparently we have the messiest lives in the room whose.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
Life was messy first. But it's surprising that nobody in
here has heard of that book, or maybe nobody wants admitted.
Maybe we shouldn't have either. But there's a quote, and
I don't want to mess it up, and that's why
I'm looking.
Speaker 2 (49:48):
I actually want to say I found this book. My
mom had it in her home and I went. I
escaped there at Christmas December of twenty twenty two when
this was all going down, and she was like, I
think you might need this, and it saved me. I
read the whole thing and now I run and listened
to it still when I'm running at audiobook. It's just
(50:11):
I can't get enough of it. But you actually just
read it this week.
Speaker 1 (50:15):
I read it this week in anticipation of this event,
and I read it in about two hours one morning,
and this quote stood out to me. It says one
of the most dangerous things you can do in life
is to ignore the moments that invite you to walk
(50:36):
down another street. This is not what we wanted, this
is not what we expected, this is not what we
saw coming. But we are finally happy and healthy, and
(50:58):
we're sorry that to get there we needed to walk
down another street. But we did, and here we are
Speaker 2 (51:09):
Without shame, now without shame.
Good evening everyone. My name is Martin Ekachuku. What works
were your host for the evening?
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'd like to introduce you to in conversations with Amy
and TJ. Thank you, thank you. Hello everyone. Wow, there's
a bright light on me. I haven't been under lights
like these in well a year and a half. Should
(00:29):
be familiar, but somehow it's not.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
We are taping a podcast tonight, and usually when we
tape a podcast, we're in a small room, a little studio,
with just two people in the room. And we love them,
two producers of ours. I think one of them is
floating around here tonight. But as wonderful as they are
to us for what we need to do and want
(00:56):
to do, tonight, we felt we needed a little more
support and love than just two people could give us.
And that's why you all to hear.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
So thank you, thank you for coming out. And I
have to say thank you. It's not just the lights.
I mean, we're nervous. We've been doing this podcast, as
we mentioned, in this small room and it feels safe
and small, like no one's listening. But we haven't been
in front of a group of people. We've been hermits,
(01:24):
we've been in hiding in a lot of ways for
a long time. So I haven't seen you this nervous ever.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Well, because I fully expect that somebody in the back
of this room is going to be throwing tomatoes at us.
And no, no, I say that somewhat jokingly, but we
have been in a business with twenty five plus years.
We've spoken in front of crowds before on TV, before
all this, and this is probably one of the smaller
(01:51):
audiences we've had in front of us live, so we
shouldn't be nervous, but for whatever reason, we are scared.
Listen and it's the truth, and I hope you all
just bear with us a little bit. But this is
a big deal for us to be in front of
an audience again, because it hasn't happened in almost a year.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Nat, that's right, and we want to thank all of
you for coming out, and we also want to point
out that we because this is such a big deal
and this is kind of our coming out in a way,
we just in public again once again. We wanted our
parents here with us tonight. We couldn't have imagined doing
(02:34):
this without them, and so they have been our biggest
supporters always throughout our entire lives, but especially during this
past year and a half. So we thought it was
a given that they would be here. But sadly they
are not. And it's not because they didn't want to
be here. There was actually just a bizarre turn of
events with both of our parents. I know your father.
(02:57):
We got a FaceTime from him last week and he
had well he's seventy six years old, and he said,
anytime your doctor says you need to go to the
cardiologist immediately, there's something wrong. So he was not medically
cleared to come here to fly at all. So that
is the only reason why t and Mary are not
here from West Memphis.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Mama Roback and Papa Robach aren't here because Mama Robaq
took a took a nasty spill a couple of months ago,
shattered her shoulder and she has been recovering and the
doctor told her also that she couldn't travel, she couldn't fly.
So I actually call bullshit on both of them.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
See nice excuse we have got.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
We got to a point seriously all that that we
got a mindset that every time we walked down the street,
we thought every single person that we passed despised us.
We actually thought every single person hated us. Now we're intellectually,
we know most people don't know who we are, don't
(03:58):
give a damn who we are. And still I mean everybody, men, women, children,
We thought everybody hated us. I could on a subway
platform a five year old could look at me wrong,
and I'm like, let's take the next train. I don't
like to wait. This kid is eyeballed.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
If any of you out there are Game of Thrones fans,
you'll understand this reference. I'm not even kidding. I we
felt a little bit like Circe walking through the streets
of Manhattan. Shame, shame, shame. I mean that is where
it was that a certain movie kept our heads down
in our pace very quick, and that is how we
had been living for over a year.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
And so that's why we can't say enough how big
of a deal it is for you all to be here.
And this should be a safe place for us, right
this is Soho House. Yeah, as they all sneaking recordings
right now, it's supposed to be a safe place. It's
not just because it's intimate and the Soho House, but
we have a bunch of familiar faces in the room
(04:55):
here with us tonight, a lot of close friends and
some family as well. I know, I don't know where
she is. I know Analise is here. Oh, there's the crew.
Her daughter, Analise is seventeen year old. You will as
she well, yeah, she's told everybody where she's she just
got accepted into college.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
And yeah she's going to the University of Colorado Boulder.
Just got the news this week. And then there is
Sabine TJ's eleven year old daughters sitting right next to Annalise.
And we've got friends. This is the friend and family
zone right over there. I so you guys actually even
have a velvet rope separating you from everyone else. Wow,
(05:34):
you're welcome.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
But thank you all so much for me here and
we want to And I haven't seen him yet. Doctor Guardier.
You all know Jeff Gardier. Where is doctor Guardier. He's
in here, somewhere back here, but there he is.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
There is.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Doctor Gardier has been a dear friend, somebody we've worked
with for twenty years in the business. He is known
as America's psychologist. And I assure you all, by the
time you all leave here tonight, you all will want
a little therapy. And I mean this by before you
all leave out here, you all will be questioning some
of the choices you are making in your life right now.
(06:12):
That's not our intent to like scare you or tell
you doing something wrong. But as we go through and
talk about what we want to talk about tonight, that
will come up. And two things in particular we want
to hit on tonight. One of them, you all are
going to be the first to hear us say something
we have not said publicly. You're going to hear us
issue a thank you tonight publicly that even for us
(06:38):
not too long ago, we would have thought unfathomable that
we would dare be saying thank you and being grateful.
So more on that in just a bit. But the
second thing we want to talk about tonight is yes, shame,
you know.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
And obviously we just discussed the public shaming that we've
experienced and it humiliating and I mean we were flogged
and still are here and there and everywhere. But that's
not what we want to talk about. We don't want
to go back to that. We don't want to discuss that.
We actually want to talk about the fact that the
public shaming actually wasn't our undoing. It was the private
(07:17):
shame that we're going to discuss. And we may be
so bold as to say, we bet every single one
of you in here knows exactly what we're talking about.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
And we're talking about that shame that causes you to hide,
that shame that causes you to pretend you're something you're not,
that shame that causes you to try to be something
else because you're hiding. You're scared you're going to be
found out. You're scared somebody is going to think you're
not enough. It's that private shame that was our undoing.
Is that private shame that causes us to hide? Well,
(07:53):
you all tonight we are done hiding.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Officially told you we were coming out, coming out in
a big way. And when we talk about that shame,
we don't. We weren't exposed, and this is an interesting concept.
We weren't exposed for being together. We were exposed initially
(08:22):
for not actually living the lives that we were portraying
to the world. And so because we weren't living those
lives that we were showing everyone, we weren't able to
actually expose our relationship.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
I saw some of you all nad your head as
soon as she said, we're not living the lives that
we were putting on and the lives we had. Look
I we are. We got two pretty impressive resumes between
the two of us. We both honor students broadcast degrees.
We both were in cable network news before the aidge
(09:00):
of thirty. We have been called upon all of the
country by a number of organizations to be a part
of it. We've made millions of millions of dollars in
this business. Hell. October fourteenth, twenty twenty two was officially
Amy Robot Day at the University of Georgia.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
I'm sure they celebrated it last year. Yeah, probably not.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
I actually am the recipient of the Young Alumni Award
at the University of Arkansas, and I was the celebrity
hall caller at a Razorback football game. Now up here,
that might not mean much to y'all, I assure you,
it's a really big deal where I'm from.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
But what wasn't attached to those resumes, or what was
attached to those resumes, Well.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
What's attached to them now? For divorces. Between the two
of us sitting on this stage, there are now four divorces,
and this is where the private shame. We had very
perfect looking families and perfect looking lives, and we were
(10:09):
guilty at times of putting out an image of our
lives that we knew was not true.
Speaker 2 (10:15):
Yeah, I'll take that one. I can point specifically to
July of twenty twenty two. I posted a picture with
a beautiful sunset behind me, and if you saw it,
I believe it said goodnight Athens was the was the caption.
(10:36):
And I was in Greece, and you saw that picture
and it looked like a rosy picture of a beautiful marriage,
just picture perfect in every way. And I posted it
because I actually got a text from a friend who said,
some of us are concerned. We're not seeing pictures of
(10:56):
you two like we used to on your Instagram. And
I immediate lee was so afraid that anyone I knew
thought would know or would think that something was wrong.
I didn't want anyone to think anything was wrong, and
so I posted that picture. The problem is everything was wrong.
When I posted that picture, I was almost sure my
(11:18):
marriage was over, and yet I didn't want anyone to know,
and no one did know for a while. And I
know you have a very similar story.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
If anybody followed me, it was obvious for a couple
of years leading up to that that I essentially had
no images or wasn't putting out anything related to my marriage.
But beyond that, I moved out of my marital home
on August twenty fourth, twenty twenty two, started a new
(11:51):
lease at a new place. I was August twenty fourth
and divorce was underway. August twenty fifth. I went to
work and got on TV with my wedding band on
August twenty sixth, Wedding Bank on the whole month of September,
wedding Band on TV October November. Same thing. And I
(12:14):
wouldn't wear it anywhere else. I would just go to
the studio, go into my dressing room where I kept it,
put it on for the show, take it off. I
didn't want anybody to know that I had another failed marriage,
and I wasn't ready for anybody to know that, And
I went even went so far as every morning at
(12:38):
GMA Good Morning America, there's a producer that will send
you an email asking what time you want your car
pickup to be to bring you to studio, and they
have your home address on file so they just going
to add what time you want it tomorrow, and me
usually when I work and if i'm certainly if I'm
anchoring Good Morning America, I would have a pick up
at four four fifteen in the morning. And four months
(13:02):
I didn't update my address and I would walk out
of my new home at three forty five am four am,
and I would walk downtown the fifteen plus minutes over
to my marital my place i'd moved out of, and
I would sneak behind cars or behind the building. Because
(13:26):
the driver was parked at the door, he knew I
wasn't coming out. I was dipping and hiding, trying to
make sure he didn't know that something was up. I
went to that type of extreme just to make sure
you all didn't know that I was a failure in
a personal aspect of my life.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Yeah, and I think when you look at Instagram, everyone
does look super happy. And I was one hundred percent
guilty of that as well. And I mentioned that one
photo I took which I still feel guilty about. But
I looked back, and I looked back and just saw
what I was posting versus what I was living, and
it couldn't have been more different. But the truth is,
(14:09):
and I think this is where I believe there's a
lot of commonality with all of us. I wanted my
life to actually be what it looked like on Instagram
so badly. I was also on my second marriage. I
had invested, you know, so much of my heart, my children,
his children. I wanted it. I needed it to be
(14:32):
what it looked like. I needed it to be what
it seemed, And mostly for my children, I wanted there
to be this picture perfect family that they could trust
and count on, especially because this wasn't even their father
or their biological brothers. So I'd already had upheaval once.
(14:54):
I didn't want to do it again. But if I'm
being honest, the other reason why I wanted so badly
my Instagram feed to be my life is that my ego.
I didn't want to be a failure. I didn't want
to have another failed marriage. I wanted to be the
(15:15):
perfect wife and the perfect mother, and two failed marriages,
that's I mean. I remember when I told my mom,
I said, my daughter has dark hair and blue eyes,
my oldest one. And I said, unfortunately, Mom, you have
a granddaughter who looks like Elizabeth Taylor and a daughter
who's becoming Elizabeth Taylor, and it just I desperately didn't
(15:35):
want it to be true, and so I put up
a front. I pretended, I played along. I wanted to believe,
and I wanted you to believe. I wanted all of
you to believe that it was true.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
How many did Elizabeth Taylor end up with husbands? Seven?
So you about halfway? But the luve Okay, that was
not a wedding announcement. Okay, y'all, it was not, but
it was the same. I had had a picture perfect
looking family, but I went to extremes. I didn't tell
(16:08):
my mama I was getting divorced. She had no idea
until everything blew up. There was I mean, Robot knew,
of course, but there was only one person in all
that time that I sat down, looked in their eyes
and said that the divorce was happening, and that one
(16:29):
person is in the room tonight, Sabine.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Obviously it's you know, this is the divorce itself. Are divorces.
Those were the painful moments. We were struggling through that
privately in so many ways, and so we weren't ready
to publicly talk about that anyone who's been through a
field relaselationship and especially a failed marriage knows when children
(17:03):
are involved, it is a completely different ballgame. And so yes,
part of it is ego, of course, wanting to keep
it private, but so much of it is also protecting
your children and not wanting them to be exposed to
the publicity that ensues. Ironically, it all blew up in
our face because because we weren't transparent with what was
actually happening in our relationships before this relationship started, everything
(17:29):
got completely blown out of proportion, and every single person,
every single outlet that wrote about us got it wrong,
completely wrong, and nearly I would say most people who
read what was written believed it. I understand why, but
it couldn't have been further from the truth. But there
(17:49):
was real pain and real emotion behind everything that was
happening before before that tabloid followed us.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
I'm back now, I'm good. Now, I'm good. That was
just that was just a blip. I'm fine. One of
my boys, Charles is here. He's like I thought he
was about to walk out the room. He's signed up
for this.
Speaker 2 (18:22):
I need a drink, but I.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Did I I Sat, I was talking about Sat sa
Bean down and and Soho at her favorite restaurant, Bo Cafe,
which has now moved that location. But we sat down
and that summer and I explained it to her and
I was shocked at how well she took it and
didn't seem very surprised at all. That could have should
have been telling. Uh. Then we got ice cream and
everything was cool. She we just had to be talking
(18:46):
yesterday and I told her I had a surprise. She
got out of school, had a text message. I said, hey,
I got some news for you, and in typical like
her daddy fashion, I was She said it's good news,
bad news. I said, just come on over after school.
I'll explain. And the news was only that she was
going to be allowed in tonight. Right, she's the only
kid in here, so appreciate your Soho house for making
(19:06):
an exception for my little one. But she I told
her what was up, and I did. I explain to her, sweetheart,
if it's bad news, then I will probably invite you
to your favorite restaurant for a meal to break the news.
And it dawned on me, Oh damn, the last time
I did that?
Speaker 2 (19:25):
Oh yeah, not funny?
Speaker 1 (19:26):
Was that too? Some but she was. We were working
to get families and kids settled for months before we
announced or or told anybody else that we were getting divorced,
and of course everything got blown up the way it did.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
And so we have spent the better part of this
past year and a half trying to make amends. We
recognize that we can explain why we didn't tell people
what was going on in our private lives. We can
explain why we weren't transparent, but that doesn't take away
the pain that this caused the people who we love
(20:07):
the most, our children, our parents, our friends. So many
people were personally impacted by our lack of transparency, our
unwillingness to keep it real, be honest with ourselves and
with the world, and the people who you know, trusted
us each and every morning. We were not transparent, bottom line,
(20:30):
and we should have been, and we could have been,
and looking back now, we wish we had been. That
is our biggest folly, and we have been apologizing and
trying to make amends to the people who we love
the most. But we also know that, and I don't
think we've said this before, we want to apologize to
our viewers and to our fans and to the people
(20:52):
to this many people who've supported us throughout our careers,
who trusted us. We were not forthcoming. We were not
trans parent about what our private lives had been like
that led us to the point where we could actually
be a couple and be accepted as a couple. We
did not, We did not make the right decisions when
we look back now, and let's.
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Be clear here we talk about transparency, let me make
this as transparent as we can. We didn't mean to
fall in love. We didn't expect to fall in love.
We didn't even realize we were falling in love, and
giving all that was on the line, you could even
(21:35):
argue we didn't want to fall in love, which seems
like an odd thing to say about the woman you're
sitting on stage with that you claim to be in
love with. I don't want to be in love with
you right back at you. That's a weird thing to think.
But we didn't. It wasn't what we were planning for.
(21:56):
But it happened. It did, it had and at work.
I know we're the first ever to fall in love
it or I get it, but it happened, and we
are grateful for it. Now and the journey that's brought
us here in front of you we can be grateful for.
(22:16):
But we believe anybody in this room you know it
when you find it, that thing that you know it,
and you gotta go for it. When that rare thing
happens in maybe it's love, but when it's right there
(22:38):
in front of your, life is too short and you
have to go for it. We're not at all endorsing
anybody going for it at all costs. You don't go
for it, and everybody else be damned. That's not what
we're saying, and that is not what we did. We
absolutely made missteps along the way, but there are reasons
(23:02):
and experiences we've had in our lives that informed the
decision we made, which is a very deliberate one to
be together, and a part of that is life is
short and you gotta go for it.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
You know. That's my language. And TJ talked about our
resumes and how we got to where we we ended up,
which was at the height of our career at the
number one morning show, and we worked our asses off
to get there almost thirty years for me and same
with TJ. And that success came at a huge price
(23:40):
to our health. I think it's fair to say, and
we'll go through it a little bit because this is
all going to tie into our theme. But our jobs
almost killed us. I had heart surgery that I don't
really talk about in twenty eleven. It was a four
(24:02):
hour heart surgery. I had a dangerous arrhythmia, and my
cardiologist they can't tell you how or why, but clearly
stress most likely contributed to that condition. And two years
later I was diagnosed with breast cancer and to have
heart surgery and breast cancer two years apart, working ninety
(24:22):
hour weeks with the pressure of network news. I don't
think that's a coincidence. You have a story as well.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Look, my doctor found a A and I have normality
in my heart, I should say, And it alarmed him
to the point that it alarmed me. Right, you don't
ever want to be at the doctor's alfice. And he
looks at your chart and goes, what the fuck? All right,
you don't want that. But he was shocked. He's like,
(24:51):
this hasn't been found before. You're thirty eight years old,
and somebody should have caught this at some point in life.
So he was concerned. Send me to a cardiologist at
the age of thirty eight. Now, I don't know if
you all been to a cardiologist's office before, but the
waiting room is full of people seventy five and older
and I'm sitting in there at thirty eight, and they
were like, oh, no, sweetheart, you go, you go first.
If you in here, you must be in trouble.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
I was thirty eight too. Wow, that's something we did
not want to have in common.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
And the other thing, this doctor diagnosed me in twenty
fifteen with moderately severe depression. I didn't know what that meant,
and I didn't do a thing to address it for
four or five years, and ultimately this doctor, on my
third visit to him with the same issues, he dumped
(25:39):
me as a patient. Right. I didn't know you could
do that. He dumped me as a patient. He literally
told me this, don't come back to me, quit your job,
move back to Atlanta, or you're gonna kill yourself. He
was done with me. Wow, And I said, okay, went
(26:01):
right back to doing the same things I was doing
that got me in that doctor's office in the first place.
Speaker 2 (26:07):
So if network news in this business itself almost killed us,
I would argue that ABC News saved my life twice.
If it hadn't been for Good Morning America at ABC
News in twenty thirteen, I would not have found my
(26:27):
breast cancer. I'm sure a lot of people know my story.
I won't belabor it, but long story short, I was
asked to do an on air mammogram at the age
of forty, perfectly healthy and fit, no family history. I
was like fine. It ended up revealing that I had
stage two invasive breast cancer. The cancer had already spread
to my lymp nodes. I ended up with a double mistectomy,
(26:50):
six months of chemotherapy for surgeries. And the truth is
I would not have had that mammogram at the time.
It was recommended that I would could wait till I
was fit fifty. So can you imagine if I had
waited ten years to have that mammogram. I don't think
i'd be sitting on this stage right now. And I
think it's very fair to say that that work assignment
(27:12):
that ABC News gave me saved my life. And I
would also say that in twenty twenty, ABC News saved
my life because that was It was the summer of
twenty twenty when I got the call from my executive
producer for GMA three the third hour of Good Morning America,
(27:32):
and she asked me what I thought about bringing on TJ.
Holmes as my co host, and I was ecstatic That
day led me to being on the stage right here
with all of you, with the love of my life,
and gave me a second chance at life.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
I got the call not long after she did asked
me to join JMA three, and I'll have you tell
because I got off the phone and immediately called you
and you were surprised by my tone and my reaction
at the time.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
Well, it speaks to your level of grace and humility
and just who you are as a person. I thought, Look,
we had been good friends, really good friends for six
years and loved working together, but we never expected this
to happen. We never expected it ABC News to put
us together, and so I was jumping for joy. I thought,
(28:33):
oh my god, I get to work with my favorite
person at ABC News, one of my great friends. This
is amazing. And he was like, I don't know, I
don't know if I want to do this. I don't
know if this is good. I don't know if we
should do this. I was like, why are you like,
what where's the hesitancy? And he didn't want I had
started the show during the pandemic and it had done gangbusters,
(28:56):
but they wanted to elevate it to the next level,
beyond and out outside side of just pandemic conversations and
really make it into a show. So I was excited
to bring on this amazing person who I knew was
going to bring the personality and the fun and the
smarts and all of the things he brings to the
table to just truly elevate the show. He was concerned
(29:16):
that somehow I would feel like he was taking over
or stepping on my toes, or it was my show
and he was coming in and taking some of my thunder.
But see, that's the cool thing about working with you.
This is a cutthroat business and we've been in it
for a long time, and I have never worked with
anyone side by side who I felt more trust with
(29:40):
because typically everyone's in it for themselves. They want to
get a leg up, they want to show boat, they
want to be the one, they want the spotlight on them.
The two of us made each other better, and you
make me better for sure. And so to know that
this person who I trusted completely who I have so
(30:03):
probably too much fun with on the set was going
to be my co anchor. It was just a no brainer.
But it was incredibly sweet and kind, and again speaks
to your character because I never even considered that it
was you infringing on my show ever.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
That show when I joined in twenty twenty, the summer
fall of twenty twenty, that those were probably the darkest
days of my adult life, and she pulled me out
of it. I think darkest days. I talked about being
diagnosed with moderately severe depression, but she saw and I
(30:52):
talked to her, and I didn't have to talk to
her every day. Sometimes she just saw it. But thoughts
of suicide, the abuse of alcohol. I didn't realize how
bad off I was, and it's it's pretty bad that
I can I can tell you it's about a five
point one five point two mile walk from my home
(31:16):
downtown to the ABC office on sixty sixth Street on
the Upper West Side, because I would walk back and
forth in the middle of the night because I didn't
want to go home and I would just walk the streets.
I can tell you there's a there's a bench on
(31:37):
fourteenth Street just west of Union Square, where I have
actually slept that night, I was the best dressed homeless
man you have ever seen in your life. With the home, yes,
but that those were off awful days from me. And
(32:02):
I was going in every day with this one. And
she is seeing me deteriorate, She's seeing me not get help.
She's seeing me the way nobody else was. And it
became an issue where I would leave home to go
to the studio. But what it really felt like is
I was leaving home and going home, which was Amy
(32:25):
Roboch who was introduced me to authors. She got me
obviously running, which helps with depression. She wouldn't let me
slide on anything. And I credit her, as this is
not dramatic. I credit her for literally helping save my life.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
You saved your life, you did, and we became best friends.
Like I said, we were good friends. But once we
started co anchoring that show together, it was amazing to
watch you transform to be the best version of yourself.
And I knew your heart, and I knew your beautiful mind,
(33:10):
and I knew you were struggling. And sometimes you just
need a friend. Sometimes you just need one person to
believe in you.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
You know, folks, this is There were times we go
to work it's five sometimes we're doing jim Ay. We'd
be in the office at five am and we are
literally side by side until eleven am when we leave
the studio. We leave the studio, go for a run
on the West Side Highway, a training run, and then
stopped it. Stop it, drift in on the West Side
Highway and have a beer after the run. From five
(33:39):
am to sometimes one, two three, we are right next
to each other. And this was happening day after day
after day, and so my good friend became my best
friend and then became everything and we knew we had
(34:00):
something specialist friends, and apparently.
Speaker 3 (34:04):
ABC knew it too. They saw the chemistry. Yeah, ABC
was our e harmony. No no, no, we didn't go in
and beg.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
Please let us do this show together her agents and reps,
and they weren't called and saying you got to get
these guys on the show. It came randomly, completely out
of nowhere that we got those calls. They made the
decision on their own. They saw something and they put
us together. And I think after they put us together,
things then really ramped up. In December of twenty twenty one,
(34:43):
another changed because one of our colleagues decided to go
to space, and this really got it, really kicked our
careers at ABC and our partnership into high gear and
were talking about s Of course that's Michael Straighthand you
explain how this, well, because light you're going to space
(35:07):
plays into this story.
Speaker 2 (35:09):
Well, we would probably I was. I was sent down
to Texas to be on the ground when he was
going up. And we love Stray, We go way back.
He's one of our favorite people on the planet. He's
just as kind and sweet and amazing as he seems
on television, maybe even more so in person, even more so.
So I was down there and I was waiting, and
(35:30):
the launch got delayed for weather. And so because I
think it was set for a Thursday, Thursday, yes, December ninth,
that was supposed to go. This is a big deal.
So all the big GMA folks were going to be
handling the special report and I was going to be
the reporter on the ground. Well, it got delayed and
so it ended up being on a Saturday. Well, a
lot of those folks don't really like to work weekends,
(35:53):
so they decided to put the b team in charge,
and so instead of just being a correspondent, TJ went
New York, I came from Texas, and we co hosted
the special report, which is a really big deal in
network news to be able to break into programming and
do the special report, and especially with one of our
favorite people going into space, we were personally invested. So
(36:15):
we didn't do your typical, you know, Dunda dun Dom
special report. We were just emotional and we were just
being us. We were being dog gulls, drag.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Oh.
Speaker 2 (36:25):
I was like, oh my god, Oh my god, what's happening.
Like I was acting like a crazy friend who was
worried about her friend flying into space, not this network correspondent.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
And yeah, she said this on the air after it
was up and it was supposed to be coming back down.
She was looking at the wrong thing that was coming down.
She thought it was strays like and she said this
on the air, they're coming in hot.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
I mean I was. It was like I was on
my couch watching Versus. I forgot I had a microphone
on and I was actually supposed to be telling everyone
it was all good and it was okay, but I
was freaking out. But it ended up being a really
beautiful emotional moment that I think was different than anything else,
and a light bulb went off in a lot of
the executives head when they saw this is special, this
(37:09):
is cool. So they started to send us all over
the place, all over the world together, all over the country,
and we started going on assignments and big assignments, fun assignments,
from the Oscars to the Queen's Jubilee. They started to
realize that we were actually entertaining and informing at the
same time and had a lot of fun and hopefully
(37:29):
if any of you all watched any of those events,
had some fun with us watching.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
So we are now again. I gave you the schedule
that we had spent all this time together anything the show,
and now they're sending us everywhere together, time after time,
with this London, or Landown, New Orleans, Houston, being in
the Oscars, we were everywhere now spending all this time together.
In our personal lives that we mentioned that shame, right,
(37:54):
that private shame, not letting anybody know and letting anybody
in to what was happening. But we were right next
to each other going through all of that in those
times together and We don't know, because we get asked
all the time. When did things start to shift from
friendship to knowing you had something more? And if you
(38:15):
will if we just did a one, two three and
both of us answered at the same time, I'm not
sure if we'd have the same answer. No, that we
would scream them out.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
I don't know how to describe it other than because
we had been now at this point friends for eight
years and just friends. This is me being totally honest.
He's too cool for me, Like I would never he
would never have been anybody I would have fought to
date because I don't know. I just you were a
little too dangerous for me.
Speaker 1 (38:42):
I don't know, Wow, I just we will edit that
out of the poet.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Actually, I actually felt safe being his best galpal because
it just never felt like anything.
Speaker 1 (38:55):
It just it.
Speaker 2 (38:57):
I really considered him. I used to say you were
like my brother, and that's exactly so it was weird.
It's gross, and then it's weird when all of a
sudden you feel like suddenly a look lingers, or you
start to feel something change. You're like, this is strange,
this is weird, and so you deny it and you
don't talk about it at all, and you don't even
(39:18):
acknowledge it to yourself, and you start realizing. I think
for me, one of the big moments was I got
so excited on Sunday night when I got to go
to work on Monday, and on Fridays, right, I didn't
have the Sunday scaries. I had the Sunday like excitement.
I was so excited, and then Friday we'd be like,
oh bye, you know, and so you start to like,
(39:38):
that's not normal, and so eventually you start to you
start to realize that you're feeling something, but truly do
not even admit it to yourself versus the other person.
But slowly, slowly, slowly, it kind of became undeniable. And
I can say this much. TJ told me that he
(39:59):
loved me before we ever even like I don't like
I ever like touched your hand. I mean, we never
held hands. There was nothing physical, And I never in
my life could have imagined feeling that kind of love
for someone where it never started out as lust, and
it actually wasn't even lust. It was just this deep
(40:21):
foundation of friendship, love, respect. We had been in the
trenches together on television in a very high stress situation
in a network newsroom, and we had been there for
each other in our darkest moments. We started leaning on
each other in so many emotional ways, and it was
just there was such a depth to what we had.
(40:44):
It was so different than anything I've ever experienced. So
it was so gutting to me to have what got
exposed in November to somehow be some like lustfull affair.
It was the complete opposite of that.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
To the point earlier, you know, we actually would get
offended and get onto people anytime they suggested something was
going on between the two of us, because it really
we actually responded like my sister. We did that for
the longest and people, we took such pride in our
friendship that when things threatened it, we defended it. And
(41:29):
love falling in love was a threat to our friendship.
We talked about that a lot. Is Hey, I whatever
we cannot, I cannot lose you as the friend that
I have to go explore something. And ultimately this went
on for months, months of deliberate and there was no acknowledgment.
(41:52):
I'm the one that finally made hey, hey, look at sister.
We got to talk.
Speaker 2 (41:55):
He did. He made me talk. I don't think I
ever would have acknowledged it.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
We just like just played us keep looking at each
other crazy and did not want to talk about it.
And I think we did realize what was at stake.
Maybe we didn't know we were would be playing with
fire and it wasn't necessary because things were great. Gig
was going great, show was going great. Life wasn't going great.
(42:23):
Our personal lives weren't going.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
Great, that's right. And so when we were having these conversations,
and I think I fell in love with you even
more because I knew this wasn't a shtick or something
you just said. You said to me at one point,
I love you so much that if all I ever
get to be in your life is your best friend,
that's enough. And I knew you meant it. And I
(42:48):
got to a point where my cancer journey played a
huge role in my decision. And this was a deliberate,
thoughtful moment for me. I asked myself, if your cancer
came back and you knew you had one year to live,
(43:11):
how would you spend it? And it wasn't even close.
I would spend it with TJ. And I have preached
and I've given speeches to breast cancer survivors and thrivers
and patients and anyone who's gone through anything life threatening
or had anything where you thought you might die, whatever
(43:31):
it is, you learn that tomorrow is not guaranteed. All
you have is today, and you have one life to live.
I used to joke, I try to live my life
like a country music song. I mean, it's just this
like in real time, realizing that this is your shot,
this is your chance, this is your moment, and you
(43:52):
don't know what tomorrow is going to bring. And that
for me was my epiphany. That was my light bulb,
and that was me living finally truthfully by admitting that
I wanted to be with you. That was my moment.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
We mentioned shame and private shame and public shame, and
we still have some work to do, doctor Gardier, maybe
on dealing with public shaming and walking down the street
thinking everybody hates us, despises us, thinks we're the worst
people in the world. We were getting better about that.
(44:40):
The private shame is done, and for a while we
carried a private shame even about being together now like
it continues for a different reason. Right we were had
a private shame that we weren't living the lives people
(45:01):
thought we were in our marriages, and now we carried
it over again to not being transparent fully about us
because we're worried if they don't really like us, it's
not going to support us. They don't, right, they don't.
They don't like to see us together. That stops you all.
(45:25):
I am in love with this woman and we are
planning a life together, and and if you don't like it,
I'm not going to finish this. I got nothing. I'm
not that dude. There are those sweet words she said,
(45:45):
I'm capable of love. I can't feel that one in.
Speaker 2 (45:48):
But you mentioned the authors that you leaned on, that
I leaned on, and that you leaned on. We found
a lot of solace in a book by Matthew Kelly.
Speaker 1 (46:02):
You all know this book. It's called Life Is Messy. Yeah, shocker.
It's on our nightstand, all right. But there's a quote
in there that I'm going to leave you all with
in a second. But before I give that to you,
we said we wanted to give a thank you tonight.
(46:23):
And again this is something doctor Guardia, I'm gonna ask
you about in a second. But we never would have
imagined that we would sit and again you want We
haven't done this even privately express to each other gratitude,
but tonight we do want to say thank you to
(46:44):
ABC News, the folks that you read the headlines that
they want to fire us, or they fired us, or
don't want us around. And we'll be honest that we
were angry as hell at ABC News for quite a while,
but only with time and with perspective, we can appreciate
(47:09):
them recognizing something in us, putting us together in the
first place, set us on a course to get better
health and happiness to where we can come out of
it now healthier and happier than we've ever been in
our adult lives. Our daughters are over there sitting next
to each other. We have our friends in the room
(47:29):
supporting us, and we have a group of you all
willing to come out, and not a single one of
you has thrown a tomato yet, so as we were angry,
and it turns out that that moment it never you'll
(47:50):
have been there. If anybody over here over the age
of thirty thirty five has dealt with it, when you're
going through it, it never ever seems like you're going
to come out of it. On the other side, it
never ever feels like this is actually going to be
a good thing for you later. We could never imagine
that them putting us together in the first place would
(48:11):
put us in a position to where they want to
fire us to then put us into a position that
we are now to be better than we have ever
been in our dot line. Thank you, ABC News.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
Thank you, James Goldston, Thank you, Cat mackenzie.
Speaker 1 (48:31):
James Goldson's the former ABC News president. He had to
sign off on us being together. Kat McKenzie, executive producer
of Good Morning America, Justin Dile, Good Morning America, Jimmy three,
Justin Dile and executive there. These were the three folks
who made that call. We are saying thank you, and
we mean it genuinely and sincerely. Thank you to ABC
(48:51):
News for putting us on this course. And I guess
it has a religious connotation, but this ABC News became
the instrument of our salvation.
Speaker 2 (49:04):
It did yeah twice now for me, so thank you,
double thank you for me.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
We are going to ask doctor Guardia to come up
here in just a second. And while that's going to
happen here in a moment, we did talk about we
wanted to give you this, this quote, Life is Messy.
Anybody know the book Life is Messy? Oh? Wow, Wow,
glad to see things are going so well for you guys.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
Nikki knows it because of me. That's the only reason.
Apparently we have the messiest lives in the room whose.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
Life was messy first. But it's surprising that nobody in
here has heard of that book, or maybe nobody wants admitted.
Maybe we shouldn't have either. But there's a quote, and
I don't want to mess it up, and that's why
I'm looking.
Speaker 2 (49:48):
I actually want to say I found this book. My
mom had it in her home and I went. I
escaped there at Christmas December of twenty twenty two when
this was all going down, and she was like, I
think you might need this, and it saved me. I
read the whole thing and now I run and listened
to it still when I'm running at audiobook. It's just
(50:11):
I can't get enough of it. But you actually just
read it this week.
Speaker 1 (50:15):
I read it this week in anticipation of this event,
and I read it in about two hours one morning,
and this quote stood out to me. It says one
of the most dangerous things you can do in life
is to ignore the moments that invite you to walk
(50:36):
down another street. This is not what we wanted, this
is not what we expected, this is not what we
saw coming. But we are finally happy and healthy, and
(50:58):
we're sorry that to get there we needed to walk
down another street. But we did, and here we are
Speaker 2 (51:09):
Without shame, now without shame.
Hosts And Creators
Amy Robach
T.J. Holmes
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