Amy Robach and TJ Holmes have broken their silence about their relationship, one year after the former news anchors were taken off the air over rumours of an alleged affair.
The former GMA3: What You Need To Know hosts reflected on the past year during the first episode of their joint podcast, Amy & TJ, which was released on 5 December. Their remarks came weeks after they made their relationship “Instagram official” by announcing the release of their podcast. In December 2022, ABC first removed them from the air amid reports they were involved in a romantic relationship.
During the podcast, Holmes referred to him and his co-host as the “folks who lost the jobs we love because we love each other”. After Robach specified that it had been the “year of hell” for her and her partner, she recalled how her relationship was first “outed” on 30 November 2022.
Holmes said that while he and his co-host were “outed as being in a relationship,” fans thought they were having an affair, as the romance came after he split from his ex-wife, Marilee Fiebig. At the time, Robach had also recently split with her husband of 12 years, Andrew Shue.
“Everyone else thought we were being outed as adulterous, being outed as cheating on our spouses and it wasn’t the case,” he said. “Because the odd thing is that the day those pictures were taken and the day that article was released, we had both, at that point, been in divorce proceedings.”
Robach explained that they had “attorneys [and] mediators,” as they “were in the middle of divorces”. She also added that her ex-husband had moved out of their home “three months” before the pictures of her and Holmes were released.
The pair went on to specify that once their divorces were finalised, that’s when they’d initially planned to send out a press release about their relationship.
“I have it in my phone still,” he said. “Our draft statements, that have never been released, that said you’ve made a statement about where you were in your marriage, and I made a statement about my divorce proceedings. And those statements were never released.”
In December 2022, Holmes and Robach were rumoured to be in a secret relationship after the Daily Mail published photos of them on multiple outings and trips together. As they made headlines for their alleged relationship, ABC News president Kim Godwin pulled the GMA3 co-anchors off the air, as the network reportedly referred to their rumoured relationship as “an internal and external disruption”.
In January of this year, an ABC News spokesperson confirmed the two news anchors were officially leaving the network. “After several productive conversations with Amy Robach and TJ Holmes about different options, we all agreed it’s best for everyone that they move on from ABC News,” the spokesperson said in a statement to The Independent. “We recognise their talent and commitment over the years and are thankful for their contributions.”
During the first episode of Amy & TJ, Holmes recalled how, on the Monday after the relationship news broke, he and Robach thought that the reports had died down, and they could just “go back to work”. However, that ultimately wasn’t the case, as they went on to recall the message they received in December 2022, when they learned they were being taken off the air.
“We each got a phone call from our bosses saying that they had made the decision, and they made it again a point to say we hadn’t violated any company policy, but because we had become a distraction that they thought it would be best if they temporarily took us off the air to let things quiet down,” Robach said. “And I remember I said: ‘Oh please, no…if you do this, this is going to create a whole new round of articles.”
She added: “I was sick to my stomach because we knew what was coming once that announcement was made.”
Holmes said once he received the phone call about the suspension, he had a feeling that he and Robach wouldn’t be returning to ABC at all.
“That was the morning we knew we would not be going back to that network,” he said. “We knew that phone call sealed it, because you can’t come back from that.”
Elsewhere in the podcast episode, Holmes recalled that when the photos of him and Robach first made headlines in November 2022, she “had to do a wellness check” on him. However, she countered that statement with: “That’s a very, very understated way of putting it.” She then recalled the texts he sent her that day, and how those messages concerned her.
“You sent me a text basically saying: ‘I’m sorry. You were the love of my life. I’m so sorry this has happened,’” she recalled. “But you were using past tense in the entire text. I texted back and I said: ‘You’re scaring me. Please tell me you’re okay.’ No response.”
According to Robach, after Holmes didn’t answer his phone, she went to his apartment with her parents. Robach then recalled how Holmes was doing, after she was “pretty hysterical” when arriving at his home.
“I saw you and you were just splayed out on your bed,” she explained. “I said: ‘TJ’ and you didn’t move. And I remember it was the most awful thing having to touch your body to see if you were warm. I was so afraid. You were just incoherent.”
Holmes also confessed that after he’d gotten off of work that morning, he’d “immediately started pounding vodka and didn’t stop for several hours”. He also said that he took “who knows how many weed edibles”, which is how he “ended up in that state [he] was in”.
In October, Holmes and Fiebig reached a divorce settlement. Lawyers for the former couple, who were married in 2010, finalised paperwork on 11 October. A certificate of dissolution was processed in New York County Supreme Court, but the settlement and divorce judgement are pending.
Holmes and Fiebig share a 10-year-old daughter, Sabine. Meanwhile, Robach and Shue finalised their divorce in March this year. She also shares two daughters - Ava and Annalise - with ex-husband Tim McIntosh, who she was married to from 1996 to 2009.
