Marilyn Stowe Blog

Supermodel Cindy Crawford recalls her parents’ divorce

American supermodel Cindy Crawford recalled her parents’ divorce during a recent appearance on TV show Oprah’s Master Class.

Her mother Jennifer’s financial struggles after the split, while Crawford was a teenager in Illinois, motivated the model to seek financial independence she told Oprah Winfrey.

Crawford, now 47, said:

“Unfortunately my parents, you know, were one of those couples that didn’t make it. When they finally did really get divorced, my father would give my mother money every week for child support. But if he was mad at her because she’d gone out on a date or done something else, he wouldn’t give her the money that week. And that sometimes meant we didn’t get grocery money or gas money. And I saw that and I was like, ‘This will never happen to me. I will never be in that situation where I can’t take care of myself.’ ”

She admitted that her desire for financial independence had affected her relationship with husband Rande Gerber, a 50 year old former male model who now owns a chain of bars.

“For Rande, my husband, it was hard for him to get used to me not needing that from him. But there’s still places in our relationship where I have to let him get that feeling. It’s okay to lean on someone. I’ve had to learn to back down a little bit from that and to be okay, even if it’s little things. But as a 16-year-old girl, seeing my mom having to plead for money every week to feed the kids, I just thought, ‘I will never be in that situation.”

She married Gerber in 1998 and the couple have two children. She was formerly married to film star Richard Gere.

Crawford had made more than 400 magazine cover appearances by 1998. She recently appeared in an advertisement for the JC Penney department store chain with her mother Jennifer.

Photo of Cindy Crawford and Rande Gerber with George Clooney by Site Marca via Flickr under a Creative Commons licence