After more than 25 years together, actors Chyler Leigh and Nathan West have gone their separate ways. Leigh, who stars in the Hallmark series “The Way Home,” opened up for the first time about their split in a deeply personal episode of the “Books That Changed My Life” podcast, released on May 12, 2026.
Leigh and Nathan West married in 2002, after meeting while auditioning for a TV pilot, per People. The couple shares three kids — 23-year-old son Noah, and daughters Taelyn, 19, and Anniston, who just turned 17 — and would have celebrated 26 years together in July, she told podcast host Chris Collins.
While the journey has not been easy, Leigh said being part of “The Way Home” has helped her heal and envision a brighter future.
Chyler Leigh Says She & Her Ex-Husband Are Still Effectively Co-Parenting
Leigh first referred to West as her ex-husband while speaking with Collins about how she’s slowly learned to remove her “mask” and live more authentically after the births of her kids, including son Noah, whom she had when she was 21 and estranged from her family.
“I had no relationship with anybody in my own family,” she told Collins. “My ex-husband’s family was absolutely wonderful. So, I did score there, which was great.”
Leigh went on to candidly share, “My relationship with my ex had reached a point where it was just time. It was time to let it go. Even after such a long time, we’d been together, it would be 26 years this year.”
GettyLeigh noted that her and West’s split is “amicable” and that they’re effectively “co-parenting,” noting, “We were doing all the things that we can, but just hit a point where it was like, ‘Okay, you what you want and what I want aren’t really lining up anymore.'”
“And I’d rather us be on good terms,” the “Grey’s Anatomy” alum continued, “and us not harbor the resentment, and the anger and the passive aggressive — all that stuff. It’s not worth it. And so, when it becomes so abundantly apparent, and the kids are picking up on it, and the whole family, it just shifts the mood and the dynamic of everything.”
Reflecting on how they were both shaped by challenging upbringings, Leigh told Collins, “He went through a lot of trauma with his family. I went through a lot of trauma with my family. So, we’re just perpetuating that cycle. And so, it was like, ‘Okay, we have to make a choice. We have to make a decision.'”
Chyler Leigh Says Being Part of ‘The Way Home’ Changed Her Life & Mirrored Her Life
HallmarkWhen Collins asked Leigh to describe “The Way Home,” she noted that she and the cast — including Andie MacDowell, Sadie Laflamme Snow, and Evan Williams — had wrapped the fourth and final season, now airing on Hallmark Channel.
“That show, on a personal level … changed my life in so many different ways,” Leigh said. “And (it was) quite cathartic, going through a divorce of a long time, having a teenage daughter, starting a whole new journey in life.”
“Like, there were a lot of synchronicities, too many to recall,” Leigh said of the show’s storyline. “Oh, not having a relationship with her mother for 20 years! Like, it’s wild all the stuff.”
She told Collins that MacDowell, who plays her mom in the show, “was a great mother to me through all this (personal) stuff. Like, everything happening in my life was at the same time happening on the show. Super weird.”
“The Way Home” season four airs Sunday nights on Hallmark Channel and the entire season is available to stream via Hallmark+.
1 thought on “Chyler Leigh Confirms Split From Husband in Deeply Personal Interview”