Ashley Earle is looking back on her involvement in the Eliot Spitzer scandal and her affair with Alix Earle‘s father.
“At 22, I indeed became someone, just not remotely in the way I had planned. My stage name and photograph were suddenly splashed across newspaper covers, and for a long time, that was the version of me people knew best,” Ashley, 40, wrote in an essay for Elle published on Monday, September 14. “Today, I’m a wife, a mother, a stepmother and a friend. I’m also still the woman who lived all of those other lives. I’ve stopped trying to separate her from who I am now.”
Ashley recalled how she had moved to New York City to pursue a music career, and while she was “working as a cocktail waitress,” she was “approached” by a man who told her “could make $1,000 an hour going on dates with high-profile men.”
“My first answer was no, but I kept his card. Eventually, I made the call. I could spend paragraphs explaining why,” she explained. “I was young. I wanted money and independence. I’d spent years operating in survival mode and had become very good at compartmentalizing. But ultimately, I made the call. It was my decision.”
Ashley confessed that she “did that work for two years” and “almost no one” in her life knew about it until she made headlines during Spitzer’s prostitution scandal.
“When I was 22, the FBI knocked on my door and showed me a photograph of a man I had seen. I didn’t know who he was,” she wrote. “When they told me he was the governor of New York, I couldn’t begin to understand what was about to happen.”
In 2008, Ashley, who went by Ashley Dupré at the time, was identified as the woman at the center of a high-profile prostitution scandal involving Spitzer. Spitzer resigned as governor one week after the government learned of his involvement with the escort service via a wiretap investigation.
“Soon, my stage name and face were on the front page of The New York Post,” she continued. “There was an almost ridiculous irony to it. I had come to New York City wanting to be noticed, and suddenly everyone noticed me — for the one thing I never wanted anyone to know.”
Months after the scandal, Ashley met Alix’s father, TJ Earle. At the time, TJ was still married to his first wife, Alisa Earle, with whom he shares daughters Alix and Ashtin Earle.
“A few months after the scandal broke, I met TJ by chance at a local restaurant in New Jersey, Parker House. We talked for five or six hours, and our connection was immediate,” Ashley recalled. “TJ was married. We crossed a line we shouldn’t have crossed, and I take responsibility for my part in that.”
Ashley acknowledged that her and TJ’s actions “affected and hurt other people, including his wife, Alisa, and daughters, Alix and Ashtin.”
“I don’t take that lightly. But at the same time, the life TJ and I eventually built is deeply meaningful to me,” she continued. “I can acknowledge that the way our relationship began was complicated and caused pain without letting that define everything that came after it. Both things can exist at once.”
After TJ and Alisa divorced, he and Ashley tied the knot in 2013. Ashley became Alix and Ashtin’s stepmother, and their relationship was fractured at first.
“Of course, our relationships weren’t easy at first. They didn’t owe me acceptance, and I didn’t expect it,” she shared. Alix has since joked that she once researched putting Nair in my shampoo, so it’s safe to say things weren’t always seamless.”
After enduring “difficult years,” Ashley was able to connect with her stepdaughters. Their family grew when Ashley and TJ welcomed Izabel, Penelope and Thomas in 2012, 2015 and 2017, respectively.
“We kept showing up, kept talking, and gave one another room to feel whatever we needed to feel. I deeply respect Alisa and the way she navigated those years. The fact that we were eventually able to move forward is something I never take for granted,” she reflected. “I can’t change how our family began, and I wouldn’t insult anyone by pretending it didn’t cause pain. But I’m also incredibly proud of what all of us built afterward. Today, Alix and Ashtin are two of the most important people in my life. We have an imperfect, chaotic, forgiving family that probably doesn’t make sense on paper, but somehow works beautifully in real life.”
The Earle family currently stars in Alix’s new Netflix show, Earle Meets World.
