Under wraps! Jackie Warner claims she dated Jillian Michaels for six years — and even helped her ex land her breakout role as a fitness coach on The Biggest Loser.
The Work Out alum, 51, detailed her relationship with Michaels, 46, on the Wednesday, July 15, episode of the podcast “Hot Takes & Deep Dives” with Jess Rothschild. Warner recalled meeting the Just Jillian star when she was 21 at a lesbian bar on Valentine’s Day.
“No one was out because it was Valentine’s [Day] and Jillian was sitting across the bar and my friend said, ‘Oh, she’s pretty cute,'” Warner said, noting that she was 30 at the time. “So I saunter over there and try to order a drink. We exchanged numbers and she told me when we got in the car that night that she envisioned me and had several dreams of exactly what I looked like, and she knew that we were going to be quite the item. And we were.”
The former Bravo star said she and Michaels dated for six and a half years and worked together as nightclub promoters. Warner later hired the California native to work at the first gym she owned.
The pair went on to open Warner’s second gym, Sky Sport & Spa, which was featured on the Bravo series Work Out. The Ohio native explained that she encouraged Michaels to audition for The Biggest Loser, where she trained contestants on and off from 2004 to 2013.
“I turned down The Biggest Loser and put her up for it. I couldn’t [do Biggest Loser] because I just opened my million- dollar beautiful gym that was on Work Out,” Warner said. “I had put all my money into that gym and I knew if I was going to be full-time working I was going to lose all my capital. Jill was the big mouth trainer and I was more the management behind the scenes. So, I just said, ‘Jill, go to this audition.’ I’ll be honest, I’ve thought about this, she was the more fiery and emotional person between us and that’s what that show required.”
The Thintervention with Jackie Warner alum said that the pair ultimately split over entrepreneurial differences.
“I told her I’m going to open my own gym and hire doctors to work for me. Her answer to me was, ‘If you don’t make me your 50 percent partner, I will work against you, take all of your clients and open my own gym,'” Warner claimed. “We broke up when she said that. But, she’s dangerous, so I made her my 50 percent partner. When she got Biggest Loser she never spent one day at the gym. So basically I had to pay her off just to go away.”
Warner added, “She’s a lot to handle. I used to call her Tasmanian devil.”
In response to Warner’s claims, Michaels exclusively tells Us Weekly, “I haven’t spoken to Jackie in nearly two decades. I’ve always wished her the best. I recommend you simply fact check her claims. The truth is pretty easy to come by.”
A source tells Us that Warner “had nothing to do with Jillian being on The Biggest Loser” and “never went on an audition for the show.” The insider adds that “Jillian raised the majority of the money for the gym” and “ran the gym with Jackie.”
Jason Pinyan, Michaels’ former agent, told Us that he got a call from NBC about the show and “asked Jackie and Jill if they wanted to go in for it,” and Warner “said she wasn’t interested.”
“She never met anyone for it, not a casting director, not a producer, no one,” he added. “I was the agent, maybe in her mind, she thought that her saying she wasn’t interested somehow was ‘giving it’ to Jill.”
Michaels began dating yoga instructor Heidi Rhoades in 2009. The pair became engaged in 2016 but called it quits in 2018 after nine years together. They are the parents of daughter Lukensia, 10, and son Phoenix, 8.
Warner, for her part, briefly dated her Work Out costar Rebecca Cardon in 2006.
