Doing what it takes. Tom Brady admitted that he once needed to make adjustments in his marriage to keep wife Gisele Bündchen happy.
“There was a couple years ago, she didn’t feel I was doing my part for the family,” the former New England Patriots player, 42, told Howard Stern on The Howard Stern Show on Wednesday, April 8. “She felt like I would play football all season and she would take care of the house, and then all the sudden when the season would end, that I’d be like, ‘Great, let me get into all my other business activities. Let me get into my football training.’”
Brady continued, “And she’s sitting there going, ‘Well, when are you going to do things for the house? When are you going to take the kids to school and do that?’”
The California native admitted that he had to “check” himself thereafter, leading him to make a “big transition” to improve their dynamic. “She wasn’t satisfied with our marriage. So I needed to make a change in that,” he explained.
Brady first met Bündchen, 39, through mutual friends in 2006 and they began dating that December. After two years together, they got engaged in January 2009 and tied the knot the following month in a private ceremony held in Santa Monica, California.
The pair welcomed son Benjamin, 10, in 2009 and daughter Vivian, 7, in 2012.
Over the years, Brady and Bündchen have encountered some bumps along the way, including the NFL star discovering his ex-girlfriend Bridget Moynahan was pregnant with his first child, 12-year-old John, after their 2006 breakup. However, Brady explained to Access Hollywood in 2016 how the couple have worked to overcome the “ups and downs” together.
“We all have our challenges that we face in our life,” he said at the time. “[But] it’s great to have that rock that you can always lean on that can support you in different ways that you need to.”
Speaking to E!’s Jason Kennedy for the In the Room series, Brady noted that “clear current communication” is what helps to provide balance in his marriage to Bündchen. “It’s not like because I’m a football player, her life is going to stop,” Brady said.
“The challenging part for us is we are very ambitious people. A lot of the times, I’m going one direction and she’s going in the other,” he continued. “It’s ships passing in the night. I’m going to football, and she’s got things she’s doing, and oh, by the way, the kids.”
