Tom Brady made one last attempt, for 11 days, to save his crumbling marriage to Gisele Bündchen just months before their divorce, according to a new book.
The NFL legend was excused from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ 2022 training camp to fly to a private resort in the Bahamas to meet his then-wife as their 13-year marriage hung by a thread.
“I have to take care of some personal things,” Brady, 49, told coach Clyde Christensen, according to the upcoming biography, “Brady: An American Story and the Price of Greatness,” via the Daily Mail.
Brady’s abrupt departure left even those around him uncertain whether he would return.
“Tom didn’t know what was going on,” one assistant coach recalled. “And we didn’t know if he would ever come back.”
When Brady returned to Tampa 11 days later, Christensen said it was obvious the escapade had failed to repair the couple’s broken relationship.
“Tom was an empty shell of who he was when he came back,” Christensen said. “There was no joy. It was all hard work.”
Brady also appeared alarmingly thin during this tumultuous period, with Anderson reporting that some coaches and teammates privately remarked that he looked like a cancer patient.
The seven-time Super Bowl champion’s marriage was reportedly strained for years when Bündchen, 46, pushed him to step away from football and spend more time with his family.
After Brady led the New England Patriots to victory over the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl LI in 2017, Bündchen rushed onto the field and, according to Anderson, asked him, “Would this be a good time to retire?”
Later in the day, Bundchen reportedly asked Brady again to hang up his cleats, to which he responded, “Too bad, baby. I’m having too much fun right now.”
The following year, she again asked Brady to retire after Brady’s team, the Patriots, lost the Super Bowl to the Philadelphia Eagles, writing him an emotional letter.
“She needed him to be present when he was home, not responding to text messages on his constantly buzzing cell phone or replaying a game in her mind,” Anderson writes. “She needed more help with the kids. She needed to be able to sleep in just a few days a week. She needed more time for her own career.”
Bündchen, one of the world’s most famous models, put her career on hold to raise their two children, Benjamin, 16, and Vivian, 13, and helped raise Brady’s son Jack, 19, from a previous relationship with Bridget Moynahan.
She eventually ended the marriage when, according to Anderson, she consulted an astrology book.
“One day, Gisele, who is very interested in astrology, looked at the stars and said to Tom, ‘We’re not compatible,'” a Brady insider told Lars Anderson. “And just like that, she was done.”
The couple announced their divorce on October 28, 2022, after getting married in 2009, saying their priority was their children.
“We have separated and although it is of course difficult to go through something like this, I feel blessed for the time we had together and always wish Tom the best,” the model wrote via Instagram at the time.
In December 2025, Bündchen remarried jujitsu instructor Joaquim Valente, and the couple now share a one-year-old son.
As for Brady, he has since been linked to model Irina Shayk and internet personality Alix Earle.
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