When Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen finalized their divorce in October 2022, it marked the end of one of the most high-profile celebrity marriages in recent memory.
An upcoming biography on the former NFL great, Lars Anderson’s “Brady: An American Story and the Price of Greatness,” delivers some surprising details about the end of that relationship.
Brady’s ‘Desperate’ Attempt
An excerpt from the book published by the Daily Mail (via Page Six), recounts Brady’s last-ditch attempt to save the marriage, which ended in failure when they divorced a few months later.
As Anderson wrote, Brady was in the midst of training camp with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers when he sought permission to leave so he could visit Bundchen at a resort in the Bahamas.
“I’ve got to take care of some personal things,” Brady told coach Clyde Christensen, per the book.
“Tom didn’t know what the heck was going on,” an assistant coach told Anderson for the book. “And we didn’t know if he was ever coming back.”
Brady spent 11 days trying to repair the relationship; however, when he returned it was clear to Christensen that it hadn’t worked. Brady had reportedly shed 20 lbs. during those tense 11 days, and Buccaneers management feared for his health.
“Tom was an empty shell of who he was when he got back,” Christensen recalled. “There was no joy. Everything was hard work.”
Football Fractured the Marriage
Getty (Mike Ehrmann)According to the book, football was at the crux of their marital problems — with the Brazilian supermodel encouraging Brady to pack it in, while he refused to stop playing.
As early as 2017, after Brady led the New England Patriots to a Super Bowl win over the Atlanta Falcons, Bündchen “rushed onto the field” and asked him, “Would now be the perfect time to retire?”
Later that same day, she once again suggested the time was right to retire, but Brady balked. “Too bad, babe. I’m having too much fun right now,” he reportedly told her.
The following year, she wrote Brady a handwritten letter begging him to retire.
“She needed him to be present when he was at home, not responding to text messages on his constantly buzzing cell phone or replaying a game in his mind,” Anderson writes. “She needed more help with the kids. She needed the chance to sleep in just a few days a week. She needed more time for her own career.”
The Final Straw Was in the Stars
GettyIt all came to a head, Anderson writes, due to Bündchen’s interest in astrology.
“One day, Gisele, who is really into astrology, basically looked into the stars and told Tom, ‘We’re not compatible,’” an “insider close to Brady” told Anderson for the book.
“And just like that she was done,” said the insider of the three words that definitively ended the marriage.
In October 2022, the two made the public announcement that they were divorcing.
“We have grown apart and while it is, of course, difficult to go through something like this, I feel blessed for the time we had together and only wish the best for Tom always,” Bündchen wrote in an Instagram post, recalled Page Six
