Gisele Bündchen has heard the rumors that her relationship with jiu-jitsu trainer Joaquim Valente commenced before her divorce from Tom Brady. But in a revealing new interview, the 43-year-old is vehemently denying the rumor.
Bündchen was straight-up asked about the rumor in a New York Times profile touting her new cookbook, Nourish, and she did not hold back her feelings about unfounded accusation that, as The Times pointed out, Brady has been spared since their divorce in October 2022 after 13 years of marriage.
The outlet reported that “in no uncertain terms, [Bündchen] refuted the charge that she had cheated: ‘That is a lie.'”
Bündchen also said, “I really don’t want to make my life a tabloid. I don’t want to open myself up to all of that.”
Bündchen and Brady were first romantically linked in January 2007 and got married on Feb. 26, 2009. They share two children, 14-year-old son Benjamin and 11-year-old daughter Vivian, while Brady also has a 16-year-old son, Jack, with actress Bridget Moynahan.
As ET reported in February, a source said Bündchen and Valente had transitioned from friends to romantic partners. The source also said that the relationship between them evolved gradually since they initially connected as friends.
That they started out as friends, Bündchen says, is what makes this relationship so unique.
“This is the first time I am seeing someone that was a friend of mine first,” she told The Times. “It’s very different. It is very honest, and it’s very transparent.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Bündchen opened up about offering her children a much simpler life now that she’s set up shop on her own in Florida, as in no more staff catering to their every need. The former Victoria’s Secret Angel is the one who drops off and picks up her kids from school. Her kids also have chores around the house, and there’s no more personal chefs, either.
“Now that I’m here, I can be alone with them,” she said. “They have to help me, and I tell them that. I say, ‘Listen, I understand we had chefs working with us and all that, but Mommy is choosing to do it this way right now.'”
In a July 2022 interview with Ford CEO Jim Farley, Brady said — prior to the divorce — that the hardest part about parenting is trying not to spoil his and Bündchen’s children.
“It’s probably the hardest thing for us as parents, you know, with myself and my wife,” Brady said at the time. “My wife grew up in rural Brazil, the farthest state south, Rio Grande do Sul, very small kind of farming town, very simple girl. You know, there are two bedrooms in their house — one for their parents and one for her and her five sisters.”
“And I grew up in, I would say, a middle-class family in California,” he continued. “My dad worked his a** off for our family. My mom stayed at home [and] took care of us kids, and I saw my mom work every day to make food for us at night and wash our clothes. They supported us by coming to all our games. It was amazing.”
“We have people that clean for us. We have people that make our food. We have people that drive us to the airport if we need that,” Brady continued. “We get off a plane and there’s people waiting for us, and we get ushered in. That’s my kids’ reality, which is the hard part to say, ‘Guys, this is not the way reality really is, you know, and what can we do about that?”
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