Gisele Bündchen is shooting down rumors that she was unfaithful during her marriage to Tom Brady, claiming that her relationship with jiu-jitsu trainer Joaquim Valente came only after her divorce.
“I really don’t want to make my life a tabloid,” the 43-year-old model told the New York Times in an interview published on Friday. “I don’t want to open myself up to all of that,” she added, but addressed the cheating rumor by bluntly stating, “That is a lie.”
Bündchen had been married to Brady for 13 years before their split in 2022, and both have been photographed on apparent dates with new people in the years since. But the seven-time Super Bowl champion, now 46, has not been subject to the same cheating allegations as his ex-wife.
“This is something that happens to a lot of women who get blamed when they have the courage to leave an unhealthy relationship and are labeled as being unfaithful,” Bündchen said in the interview. “They have to deal with their communities. They have to deal with their family. Of course for me, it just happens to be a little bit amplified.”
The former Victoria’s Secret Angel did confirm that she is now seeing Valente and admitted that it’s the first time she’s dated someone who started out as her friend.
She described the budding relationship as “very honest, and it’s very transparent.”
Since her divorce, Bündchen has moved out of the mansion she shared with Brady in “Billionaire’s Bunker” in Miami and purchased her own residence just a short drive across the water, in Surfside, Fla.
The new environment, she said, is similar to her hometown of Horizontina, Brazil, where she remembers growing up and observing her mother’s hard work around the house.
“My mom — she’s superwoman to me. She’s a warrior,” Bündchen said of her mother, Vania Nonnenmacher, who died of cancer in January at the age of 75.
Now, Bündchen is trying to set the same example for her kids, 14-year-old Benjamin and 11-year-old Vivian. She’s been doing many of the chores around the house herself, including making breakfast for her children, she explained.
She’s even created her own cookbook, set to be released March 26: “Nourish: Simple Recipes to Empower Your Body and Feed Your Soul,” which will feature 100 of her favorite recipes.
In a recent Instagram video, Bündchen called the process of making the book, “a work of love,” adding, “of all of the things I’ve done, it’s completely different.”
