It’s perhaps the happiest problem facing Bob Iger, the newly reinstated president of ABC’s parent company Disney, as he takes back the reins of the conglomerate and its top-rated cash cow, “Good Morning America.”
Two of “GMA”‘s most reliable – and until recently very married to other people – star anchors, Amy Robach and TJ Holmes, are drawing even more attention to the No. 1 morning show as a result of their amazing secret romance.
Insider says the affair, which was revealed last week in a series of photos showing the couple in a bar at Lincoln Center and in a cozy rented cabin upstate, translates to what one source called “ratings gold.” before the show.
Rumor has it that Robach and Holmes, both 49, who started co-hosting “GMA 3” in 2020, will not be penalized for continuing behind the scenes – at least until now.
However, the drama could get messier. Multiple sources told Page Six Friday that Holmes – who has been married to Marilee Fiebig since 2010 – had an alleged three-year affair with a married producer at “GMA”, Natasha Singh, which began in 2016.
Holmes and the producer both confided in mutual friend Robach as they tried to figure out how to leave their husbands.
“Amy was the person they went to talk to about their affair and marriages,” an insider said.
As rumors circulated about Holmes and Robach, another source said, “Marilee never considered Amy because she was focused on Natasha. She never considered [Holmes cheating] with Amy because they were friends. Amy’s daughter was their daughter’s babysitter.”
Holmes reportedly ended the affair and began working with Fiebig to reconcile their marriage during the pandemic. Robach remained friends with Singh and it angered Fiebig because “she would see pictures of them on Instagram and she didn’t understand how their friend and her husband’s co-host could stay friends with the woman who tried to break up their marriage”, the first source said.
All that is apparently a thing of the past for Holmes and Robach. The two unashamedly got to work last week after the news broke. They dropped the scandal on Thursday and Friday’s shows, privately proclaiming that the affair started after the two lost their respective spouses.
“They’re not ashamed. They’re two consenting adults who eventually fell in love,” an ABC source told Page Six.
In fact, the two giggled together on the set Thursday prior to baking holiday cookies with Chef Caroline Schiff, as Robach gleefully announced, “It’s Friday night!” Robach looked carefree as she returned solo to her Manhattan apartment after Friday’s show.
However, insiders say there is collateral damage in the form of the spouses left behind. Robach married former ‘Melrose Place’ star Andrew Shue in 2010, the same year TJ Holmes tied the knot with immigration lawyer Fiebig.
A “GMA” contributor told Page Six that Holmes and Fiebig had been separated for six months, but were trying to “work things out” when news of his romance with Robach broke on Wednesday.
‘She’s devastated. She had no idea,” the source says. “They haven’t been in together [a while]but they tried to fix it.
“They got together just before TJ’s birthday,” which was August 19.
The source notes that while Fiebig wasn’t wearing her wedding ring, the now-estranged couple tried to reconcile.
Shue, for his part, wiped Robach off all of his social media accounts.
Robach and Holmes have reportedly been romantically intertwined since March, when they were training for the New York City Marathon. Sources told The Post on Thursday that Robach and the “Melrose Place” alum’s divorce is nearing completion.
“He moved in earlier this summer,” a source told me. “They had constant problems over the years and they eventually broke up.”
But just a year ago, in a joint December 2021 interview with Robach on “The View,” Shue gushed about his wife and the success of their marriage and mutual stepparenting. The performance was linked to a children’s book they wrote, ‘Better Together’.
“This is our greatest achievement because it’s not easy,” Shue said of their marriage at the time. “Anyone who has built a family knows that it is very difficult to bring different parenting styles together.”
Robach has two daughters, Ava and Analise, with ex-husband Tim McIntosh, while Shue shares sons Nate, Aidan, and Wyatt with his ex-wife, Jennifer Hageney. Shue said it was challenging to merge their families, but it was worth it.
“I give Amy credit for really sticking with it because there were a lot of times where I was a bit of a problem figuring out how we could do a script together,” he explained during the interview. “I resisted. It’s hard to have two scripts. You must have one script. And when you are married for the first time, it is clear that you have one script. And Amy has brought so much to my boys, discipline and love. It has really been a journey.”
Robach reacted equally enthusiastically about her then husband.
“Andrew is very selfless there,” Robach said. “He also brought so much love and structure and joy and heart to our family, and so we made decisions together to get on the same wavelength. But it wasn’t easy, and sometimes it still isn’t easy. It’s not like we figured it out. We just try to work together, that’s the whole point.”
Holmes and Robach have reportedly been very friendly since he joined the GMA team in 2014. Robach previously told People that she was thrilled when execs decided to pair them with “GMA 3”.
“[They] said, ‘Hey, we want to bring a co-anchor. What do you think of TJ Holmes?’ And I almost fell off my chair,” said Robach.
“My God. You couldn’t have chosen a better person to ask me what I thought, because we’ve literally spent the past five years trying to find a way to work together.”
Robach also told People how she and Shue double dated Holmes and Fiebig in the early years.
“The moment he started at ABC, I think it just clicked,” she said. “We’ve had tons of double dates with our husbands and my daughters babysit his daughters.”
The bond between the two couples is somewhat reminiscent of former CNN head Jeff Zucker’s once-secret affair with his then-colleague Allison Gollust, a 10-year relationship that began when Zucker and his wife and Gollust and her husband lived in the same apartment building in lived in Manhattan. . It led to their respective divorces and their mutual demise at CNN.
Meanwhile, Mika Brzezinski and her now-husband Joe Scarborough, the co-anchors of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” reportedly started an affair while both married to others, but somehow escaped scandal.
“Everyone knew, I mean everyone,” said a former NBC News contributor of Brzezinski and Scarborough’s initially illicit romance. “But somehow it never became a problem.”
Robach has experience weathering storms both on and off camera. Born in Michigan and raised in Georgia, Robach began working at a local station in Charleston, SC and moved to WTTG in Washington before methodically climbing the ladder of cable and network news. A stint with MSNBC in 2003 led to the “Weekend Today” anchor job at NBC News. She left for ‘Good Morning America’ in 2012.
In 2019, she was caught in a hot microphone moment when she complained about how ABC allegedly “destroyed” its exclusive coverage of the Jeffrey Epstein sex scandal before it exploded years later.
In 2013, she discovered she had stage 2 cancer in both breasts and lymph nodes. She underwent a double mastectomy and said at the time that doctors had contracted the cancer.
Robach said last year that she attributed a keto diet and intermittent fasting to maintaining her health. Her lookalike mom, Joanie, has a blog dedicated to keto recipes called MyKetoHome, inspired by her daughter’s illness.
As for her current lover, Holmes, he has always sounded confident to face any scandal.
If his affair with Robach doesn’t work out, he probably won’t worry about finding someone new.
When his “GMA” co-host Sara Haines asked him in 2015 what he uses for pick up lines, Holmes looked momentarily puzzled.
“I don’t need pick up lines, are you kidding me?” he said. “I say Hi.” That’s my text.”
