Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, Chirlane McCray separating after 29 years of marriage
NEW YORK -- Former Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray, are separating.
The couple sold themselves as a political team when de Blasio was elected nearly 10 years ago.
When de Blasio succeeded Michael Bloomberg as mayor, he made it clear that New Yorkers were getting a two-fer -- a new political power couple who would work together to end what they called "a tale of two cities."
Ironically, it seems the stress of their political lives took its toll on their union.
Suitcase in tow, de Blasio left his home Wednesday morning as news broke that he and his wife were going their separate ways. He wasn't thrilled that a CBS New York cameraman asked him to comment.
"I can't do that right now ... can't do it. Read the newspaper," de Blasio said.
He was referring to an interview he and McCray gave to the New York Times, where they said it was politics that created fissures in the marriage. It was the pressures of being mayor.
"Everything was this overwhelming schedule, this sort of series of tasks," he told the newspaper, "And that kind of took away a little bit of our soul."
Add to that the failed presidential bid that McCray was skeptical about, and then the COVID-19 crisis.
"It made me emotionally very needy," he said, "and we were not as connected.".
And the picture of de Blasio leaving home by himself for a trip, a newly dark hairdo matching the color of his shirt, makes sense.
"He's just going on a trip. He'll be back," McCray said.
The couple, who were married 29 years ago, are planning a split as unconventional as their marriage. He was tall; she was short. He is white; she is Black. She had identified as a lesbian.
They say, for now, they will live together in their Park Slope brownstone and date other people, after working out a set of rules.
"I hope that we can be a model for how couples can communicate honestly about what their needs are and how to conduct themselves when they find it's time to move in a different direction," McCray said.
She said they didn't plan to leave the public arena as they work on just what their post-Gracie Mansion life will look like.
"We just want to be able to continue our lives as public people, which it seems like we never stopped being public people, no matter what. But do it in a way that shows that all that we had, all that we built, just doesn't go away," McCray said.
After CBS New York's cameraman caught up with de Blasio, he tweeted out a picture of the two with their arms around each other. He said, "Even at this moment of change, this is a love story."
