From fallout to fulfillment. More than two years after Dean McDermott’s affair was revealed by Us Weekly, his wife, Tori Spelling, reflected back on the cheating scandal and discussed the aftermath of the devastating betrayal in an interview on the Today show on Thursday, March 10.
“Life is good,” the True Tori star, 42, noted to Hoda Kotb and Jenna Bush Hager. “We had to deconstruct our relationship. We really did, and I feel like we’re kind of turning monogamy on its head, flipping it and being like, ‘Well … through some fighting we’ve been told what life should be, what marriage should be.'”
Spelling told the cohosts that she never thought she would be faced with infidelity. “I wanted the fairy tale!” the doting mom of four said. “And then when it wasn’t, I was like, ‘Well, what do I do? Divorce my husband? I have four kids.'”
For the Beverly Hills, 90210 star, the only option was to fight. “I was like, ‘You know what? I love this man. I’m going to make this work,'” she recalled. “We started at ground zero and built it back up. It’s amazing. In May, it’s going to be 10 years. Ten years! A decade.”
Us Weekly broke the news in December 2013 that McDermott had a two-day affair with a woman named Emily Goodhand while working in Canada. His marital struggle with Spelling was subsequently documented on Spelling’s Lifetime docuseries True Tori.
In May 2015, the couple told Us that their bond was stronger than ever following the betrayal. “We’re doing great,” Spelling said at the time. “Really strong, committed and grateful.”
“Unfortunately, you go through … upsets in your life,” McDermott added to Us at the time. “And you learn from them and you grow from them and we’ve certainly done that. We’ve certainly grown from them and we’ve gotten closer and stronger.”
The family will appear in a Cooking Channel special called Tori & Dean’s Spring Picnic. All four kids — Liam, 8, Stella, 7, Hattie, 4, and Finn, 3 — will appear on the family-focused episode, along with McDermott’s eldest child, Jack, 17, whom he shares with his ex-wife, Mary Jo Eustace. It debuts on March 20.
