When it comes to celebrity couples, it’s hard to find a bond as tight as the one between Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen. Together for almost 15 years, the former New England Patriots quarterback and stunning supermodel have weathered their fair share of relationship storms, emerging stronger than ever from each new drama. How have they managed to stick by each other’s side through thick and thin? Here’s a detailed look at their long, goals-worthy love story.
Love At First Sight
Cupid had his arrow aimed at Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen from the very start. When the pair first met back in 2006—a year after Bündchen’s high-profile breakup from Titanic star Leonardo DiCaprio—their attraction was instant. “I knew right way—the first time I saw him,” Bündchen told Vanity Fair in a May 2009 article. “We met through a friend. The moment I saw him, he smiled and I was like, ‘That is the most beautiful, charismatic smile I’ve ever seen!’ We sat and talked for three hours.”
From that moment on, the Brazilian beauty knew that she had found her other half. “You know that feeling of, like, you can’t get enough?” she explained. “From the first day we met, we’ve never spent one day without speaking to each other.”
All About Their First Date
The story gets even sweeter when you learn that Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen were set up on a blind date. “For some reason, everybody thought they needed to, like, find me a boyfriend,” the former Victoria’s Secret Angel revealed in a 2018 appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. “It was my third blind date, and the other two were dinners, so I was stuck there for an hour and a half thinking ‘when can I get out?’ and ‘where’s my food?’”
Expecting her blind date with Brady to be as bland and boring as the other two, Bündchen limited the meet up to drinks only. “A drink can take three minutes or two hours. You can go drink or you can go sipping,” she explained.
But as the fates would have it, the third time was really was the charm for the supermodel, who was immediately lovestruck by the sweet and soft-spoken quarterback. “When I saw those kind eyes, I literally fell in love right away,” Bündchen said.
Working Through Football Problems
Falling head over heels has not made the pair immune to life’s trials and tribulations—especially those faced by a high-profile football star. When friction between Tom Brady and Patriots’ head coach Bill Belichick reached a fever pitch, for example, it was Bündchen who defended her QB husband to Patriots’ CEO Robert Kraft.
According to Jeff Benedict, author of the 2018 book The Dynasty, the supermodel “pointed out how ridiculous it was that after all these years, Belichick still treated Brady like “[expletive Johnny Foxboro. It was bad enough to never voice approval. It was [expletive] to still be dressing down the most accomplished quarterback in league history during team meetings and treating his personal trainer and best friend like some kind of outcast.”
Brady has also admitted that his dedication to football has caused problems in his marriage and that he’s had to work on setting his priorities straight. Earlier this year, the QB told Howard Stern: “I had to make a big transition in my life to say, I can’t do all the things that I wanted to do for football like I used to. I gotta take care of things in my family…because you can get caught up in your life where you think a relationship’s great because it only works for you, and the point of a relationship [is] it has to work for both. You’d better work on both because if you don’t, then ultimately, it’s not sustainable.”
Working Through Baby Problems
Football wasn’t the only thing to cause drama in Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen’s relationship. In 2007, just months after the pair started dating, Brady discovered his ex-girlfriend Bridget Moynahan was pregnant with the football star’s child.
“It was a challenging thing because here I am, you know, thinking, I’m dating this guy, we met, and we started dating and everything is great and then this happens,” Bündchen told CBS This Morning, according to People. “So, then I felt like I didn’t know what to do. It was kind of one of those moments of like, ‘Do I just run away?’”
Luckily, she decided to stick it out and see the situation through. And Brady says that in the end, the sticky situation actually strengthened their relationship. He told Howard Stern: “We were forced into this very important thing that was happening in our life at a new part of our relationship. So in a lot of ways, I found out a lot about Gisele through this experience. She found out a lot about me.”
Today, the couple share two children—son Benjamin Rein, 11, and daughter Vivian Lake, 7. Brady’s son with Moynahan, named Jack, is 13.
Rumors About Their Relationship
Like many high-profile celebrity couples, Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen’s relationship continues to be fodder for story-hungry tabloids. The pair are often accused of living separate lives and are constantly being described as on the brink of divorce.
Most recently, Life & Style reported that the pair’s marriage was on the rocks as a result of the QB’s decision to move to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Their “source” claimed the supermodel thought Brady was being selfish for wanting to make the move to Florida. However, Gossip Cop swiftly busted this baseless rumor.
We’re always rooting for this adorable couple—and will continue to debunk bogus tabloid stories about them whenever we can!