Rising above the drama. Bridget Moynahan unexpectedly found herself in the spotlight following her 2006 split from Tom Brady and her high-profile pregnancy.
The Blue Bloods actress dated Brady from 2004 to 2006 and learned that she was pregnant with their child months after their split, when the NFL star had already moved on with his now-wife, Gisele Bündchen. Moynahan gave birth to son John “Jack” Edward Thomas in 2007 and later reflected on the “traumatic” experience of welcoming a child in the midst of a media frenzy.
“I’m not sure anyone — and I could be wrong in this — grows up thinking, I want to be a single mom,” she told Harper’s Bazaar in June 2008, reflecting on her complicated status with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback. “You really have to weigh out all the pros and cons and how it will fit into your life professionally, spiritually, and emotionally. Doing it on your own when it wasn’t expected comes with a lot of fears and anxieties. But I felt 100 percent that I could do this.”
Brady tied the knot with Bündchen in February 2009 and the pair welcomed their first child together, son Benjamin, 10 months later. They also share daughter Vivian, born in December 2012. In her 2018 memoir, Lessons: My Path to a Meaningful Life, Bündchen admitted that Moynahan’s pregnancy “wasn’t an easy time” for her either.
“Two months into our relationship, Tom told me that his ex-girlfriend was pregnant. The very next day, the news was everywhere and I felt my world had been turned upside down,” the supermodel wrote at the time. Despite the challenging circumstance, Bündchen still has so much love for her “bonus child,” Jack.
“[He made] my heart expand in ways I didn’t know was possible,” she wrote.
While her journey to motherhood might not have gone exactly as planned, Moynahan is grateful for her blended family. “My son has two loving parents and an extended family, whether it’s cousins or stepmothers or boyfriends,” she previously told More magazine. “My son is surrounded by love.”
Brady, for his part, reflected on the unique progression of his relationship with Bündchen and Moynahan’s pregnancy during a candid interview on The Howard Stern Show.
“I didn’t want to have kids or get married until my late 30s. That was the plan,” Brady recalled in April 2020. “It was an interesting time because we found out after that my ex-girlfriend was pregnant with my oldest son. We were forced into this very important thing in our lives at a new part of our relationship. In a lot of ways, I found out a lot about Gisele through this experience, and she found out a lot about me dealing with a situation that was not a very easy one. … It was hard for my wife and for my son’s mom because she didn’t envision that either.”
While the experience “challenged” everyone involved, Brady thought they “all made the best of the situation” and gushed over his firstborn son. “My heart explodes when I think of him. He’s the greatest kid you could ever ask for,” the football pro said.
Scroll down to see more of Moynahan’s honest quotes about her relationship with Brady.
