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