Jim Toth and Reese Witherspoon will be celebrating their tenth wedding anniversary next year, but some tabloids are doubtful that the spouses will last that long. For years, rumors have circulated that Witherspoon and Toth are headed for a divorce, though the couple seems outwardly fine. Gossip Cop has noticed the seemingly unending rumors in the tabloids and decided to investigate why these rumors have such longevity.
A Fated Meeting
Toth and Witherspoon first met in 2010, shortly after Witherspoon ended her brief relationship with Jake Gyllenhaal. In an interview with Elle, Witherspoon revealed that the two of them met at a friend’s house party. Toth saved his future wife from the advances of a terribly drunk man who was hitting on her. “It happened out of the blue,” Witherspoon explained.
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“This really drunk guy was hitting on me, making such an idiot of himself, yelling at me. He was like, [slurring, scowling, pointing finger in her face] ‘You don’t know me.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I know. I don’t know you!’ Jim came over and said, ‘Please excuse my friend. He’s just broken up with someone.’” The encounter left a very good impression on the Big Little Lies actress, who went on to say, “Jim was a really good friend, pulling him out of that situation. That’s just kind of who he is, a really good person.”
The attraction was instant and the two soon began dating in earnest. A little less than a year after the two began seeing each other, Toth popped the question and Witherspoon happily accepted, despite previously believing she’d never get married again. “Jim said, ‘I’m gonna show you every day what a good partner is, what a good person is. I’m going to take care of you. I’m gonna do this so much that you’re gonna get used to it.’ I was like, ‘What are you talking about?’ I’ve never had anybody like that in my life.”
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Reese Witherspoon, Jim Toth Begin Their Lives Together
The very next year, after they exchanged vows, Witherspoon and Toth welcomed their first child together, a son they named Tennessee. The now-7-year-old boy is Witherspoon’s third child, with the actress having had her daughter, Ava, and older son, Deacon, with her ex-husband Ryan Phillippe.
Although Jim Toth and Reese Witherspoon seem like they have an almost fairy-tale love story, the tabloids constantly harp on how unstable and on the verge of collapse the pair’s marriage is. Any change, no matter how big or how small, in either Witherspoon or Toth’s life results in breathless speculation from the supermarket gossip magazine rack that the two are headed for a divorce. These rumors have only gotten nastier since much of the country has gone into lockdown due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. In quarantine, the spouses’ marriage has apparently suffered greatly.
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Witherspoon, Toth Quarantining Separately?
In April, NW insisted that the spouses were quarantining separately, which suspicious insiders believed this separation would become permanent. “Reese can gush as much as she wants about her ‘supportive’ husband, but they barely speak two words to each other these days,” a supposed pal told the magazine. Tensions between the two had gotten so bad that Witherspoon was even considering getting a divorce.
“She and Jim might talk themselves out of a divorce every time because of money, but she’s at the point where that doesn’t matter anymore. She wants someone to come home to, and Jim’s not it,” the source confided. Gossip Cop didn’t believe this bogus tale for a single second. First of all, Witherspoon revealed that she and her family were quarantining together during her appearance on Miley Cyrus’ Instagram show, where she specifically mentioned her husband. Clearly this tabloid ran this story with faulty information.
In Touch later ran a two-page spread claiming the Morning Show star was living in a “quarantine Hell” and divorcing her husband of nearly 12 years. “Reese and Jim have always had their issues, but things are amplified now that they’re both working from home. There are even rumors they’re headed for a divorce,” a insider for the magazine said. Like all the other rumors about the spouses having a difficult time during their quarantine, Gossip Cop found this story to be false. In an interview in the June 2020 issue of Candis magazine, Witherspoon said of her husband, “We have the best time together. We find humor in everything,” adding, that they “have that lovely easy relationship – you know how you get that sort of great feeling when it’s all working out.” Obviously we trust the actress to speak for herself over the ramblings of some anonymous “insider.”
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Witherspoon Too Busy For Her Husband?
Even before quarantine began, there were allegations that Witherspoon’s career and busy schedule were impeding her marriage to Toth. According to the tabloids, Witherspoon was apparently choosing work over her family too often for Toth’s tastes, which was leading to some marital problems for the couple. All work and no family time, these outlets argued, would soon lead to a single life for Witherspoon.
Once again, NW was the outlet behind yet another ridiculous rumor concerning Toth and Witherspoon. Way back in 2018, the tabloid claimed Witherspoon’s professional obligations were getting in the way of her personal, family life. At the time, the actress was promoting her film A Wrinkle In Time, producing the second season of Big Little Lies, as well as running her clothing line, Draper James, among other projects.
The outlet’s source, a so-called “family insider,” seemed to believe this was too much work for Witherspoon, who snitched, “It’s hard to believe that having such a crazy workload isn’t putting a strain on her marriage. She simply has a lot less time for her husband, and it has people wondering if Jim and her are in fact okay.” Note how speculative this quote is. The “insider” wasn’t actually saying there’s a strain on the marriage, rather they were wondering if there was strain on the marriage. Gossip Cop was told on background that no real “family insider” of the couple would ever speak with a tabloid about the spouses’ personal affairs.
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These allegations have been repeated multiple times every year since then, and the story is almost always the same. Witherspoon has too much on her plate to concentrate on her husband and her home life is suffering as a result. These insulting claims are almost never made about male celebrities. It should also be noted that Witherspoon had a career long before she met Toth. Why would her dedication to her work suddenly become a problem? A woman can have a career, even a busy one, and still have a successful marriage and family life.
Twice Married, Once Divorced
Of course Reese Witherspoon’s first marriage to actor Ryan Phillippe is used as a way for tabloids to attack Witherspoon’s current marriage to Jim Toth. Tabloids still view divorced women, especially those on a second marriage, with suspicion verging on derision. Naturally the old fuddy-duddies that write for these sorts of outlets are behind the times when it comes to modern families like Witherspoon’s.
Since the tabloids have long been reporting that Witherspoon and Toth are at odds with each other, the established tabloid trope of “leading separate lives” often comes into play. That usually leads into another tabloid trope of “saving the marriage,” usually through some sort of family vacation.
After Jim Toth and Reese Witherspoon’s 2013 DUI and disorderly conduct arrests, the tabloids couldn’t publish enough stories about how Witherspoon’s “partying” ways and drinking were supposedly causing tension between herself and her husband. The arrests, which came after Toth was pulled over for a suspected DUI and Witherspoon antagonized officers in her husband’s defense, have provided these outlets with endless fodder to spread baseless rumors.
Tabloids will use any and every excuse as a reason to report that Jim Toth and Reese Witherspoon are divorcing, even though that’s clearly not the case. The only reason these outlets report such nonsense as much as they do is in order to entice readers to purchase their shady magazines. Gossip Cop will stay on the case in order to keep bad actors at bay.