My apologies in advance for sourcing in the text only -- tech inept, can't link from Kindle archive??
In an earlier post, I speculated that AB "loved hard." I've since read more about his early love life, and I'll never be convinced otherwise! He loved very hard.
"Open relationship?... sure, fine." Except that I see one, loyal man who simply wants his anchor by his side.
First Love:
Anthony Bourdain and NP were together long before Bourdain became a chef, author and TV personality. They were high school sweethearts in New Jersey and later married in 1985.
Bourdain
said in a 2012 interview with Daily Life that NP was older than him and she was the “bad girl” in high school. He said in high school, he hung out with the typical crowd, while she was part of the “druggy crowd” and he was “smitten.”
In fact, Bourdain said he chose to graduate high school a year early so that he could follow her to Vassar College in New York. At the time, Vassar had just started admitting men, Bourdain said, so he was one of the only male students at the college when he enrolled. However, he dropped out after two years and enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America in New York.
Bourdain and NP were incredibly close and, at one time, he considered her the love of his life. “She was my partner in crime, my wife, and before that my girlfriend,” he told Daily Life.
Bourdain
elaborated on his married life with NP in a 2017 interview with the New Yorker, comparing their marriage to the Gus Van Sant film “Drugstore Cowboy.” Anthony said he and NP had a “kind of love and codependency and sense of adventure – we were criminals together. A lot of our life was built around that, and happily so.”
He said much of their life involved drugs, but they also enjoyed a pretty quiet lifestyle, where they would get takeout at night, watch The Simpsons together, and save up for a vacation in the Caribbean every few years.
Bourdain told Daily Life that, like most couples, he and NP had good times and bad times. “I spent almost two years traveling and filming ‘A Cook’s Tour’ and, as a result, my marriage fell apart,” he said.
He did try to save his first marriage though. According to the New Yorker, he remodeled their apartment, but they still failed to establish a travel schedule to accommodate both parties. He wanted to travel the world and she simply wanted to take a vacation once a year, so, ultimately, they divorced after 20 years citing distance as the driving force.
After their split, Bourdain said he coped by self-medicating and behaving “in a completely irresponsible and suicidal way."
He said divorce was the worst thing in the world for him, even though it was pretty amicable and wasn’t contentious or long and drawn out like some divorces. “It’s just a terrible thing when a relationship that great ends,” he said. (BBM)
One time, according to the New Yorker, after passing out after taking medicine for an illness and drinking alcohol on an empty stomach, he woke up emotionally shaken, and he went back to his villa to write a long email to NP to help clear his head.
When asked about what he wrote, he told the New Yorker:
“The sort of thing you write if you, you know, thought you were going to die. ‘I’m *advertiser censored*king sorry. I’m sure I’ve acted like I wasn’t.’ We’ve had very little contact—you know, civil, but very, very little. ‘I’m sorry. I know that doesn’t help. It won’t fix it, there’s no making amends. But it’s not like I don’t remember. It’s not like I don’t know what I’ve done.'”
Second Wife:
"An unconventional relationship from the beginning." People Food
OB was born and raised in Lombardy, Italy and moved to NYC in 2000. She was studying to be a dentist when, in 2000, she abruptly fled to the U.S. with just $300 to her name, following an Irish rock musician she was infatuated with.
She worked her way up the chain of command at various New York restaurants, before becoming general manager at Geisha. It was there that famed chef
Eric Ripert met her and thought she’d be a good match for his friend, Anthony Bourdain. (Eric Ripert reportedly found AB deceased). The couple’s first date was a cigar bar. Within a few dates, they had matching chef’s knife tattoos. Bourdain once wrote of being
“enraptured” by watching her eat a six-pound lobster on a date.
Over the course of two weeks in 2007, Bourdain and OB were married, and he became a father. (Bourdain and OB's daughter is now 11).
Any mention of OB these days is likely to be focused on her passion for Brazilian jujitsu which she progressed to after starting kickboxing to get fit again after their daughter was born. OB is currently a mixed martial arts fighter.
“I like that you have your own life,” Bourdain added. “I respect that you found something you love that you want to excel at. That’s something I understand and very much admire. And I’m tickled by the notion that if we are in a bar and someone gets lippy with me, I’m pretty sure you could take them. That’s pleasing to me.”
Sept 19, 2016 - People reported the couple separated after 9 years--
Take note the announcement was from wife OB:
“Because of professional decisions we both have made, my husband and I have been for years in an unconventional relationship. Nothing has changed. We love each other. We respect the decisions the other has made. And we’ll always consider ourselves a family.”
At time of Bourdain's death, multiple sources report that the couple never legally divorced.
