Amy Robach’s daughters were thrown for a loop when news broke of her affair with T.J. Holmes.
“Even when my daughters found out about this, because of the tabloids, they were shocked and thrown a punch that I think a lot of people felt when they found out about us,” Robach, 50, said of her two daughters on Tuesday’s episode of her and Holmes’ “Amy & T.J.” podcast.
Robach — who shares Ava and Annalise with her first husband, Tim McIntosh — recalled her elder child’s surprise over their relationship that seemingly came out of nowhere.
“I remember my oldest daughter said to me, she thought it was such a quick decision, that it was just an abrupt thing I just leapt into,” Robach said. “And I said that, no, I thought about this. I sat with this. I knew how I felt. I knew how he felt about me. I knew how I felt about him.”
She added, “I really carefully considered what I wanted to do before I did it.”
The former “GMA3” star said that her cancer journey taught her to take nothing for granted.
“You have one shot at this life and time is not guaranteed and today is all you have and so I thought about all of those things when I thoughtfully chose to be with this man,” she said.
Robach said that finding true love is “rare” and that she wasn’t “living [her] truth” during her marriage to second husband Andrew Shue, to whom she was married when her relationship with Holmes made headlines.
“If living your truth means making a change, it’s hard, it can be messy, it’s difficult oftentimes and you will be met with a lot of people telling you otherwise,” Robach said. “But you know, you feel in your chest, in your heart, you know what’s right.”
“If you follow that and you try to do right by everybody along the way, I say go for it.”
Holmes, who was still married to Marilee Fiebig amid the scandal, and Robach have both asserted that they did not cheat on their respective spouses at the time.
“[We] lost the jobs we love because we love each other,” Holmes, 46, said in the first episode of their “Amy & T.J.” podcast earlier this month.
“To be clear, we were outed as being in a relationship, but everyone else thought we were being outed as adulterers — being outed as cheating on our spouses — and it wasn’t the case,” he explained. “We both at that point were in divorce proceedings.”
Robach added that they “had attorneys and mediators [and] were in the middle of divorces” and that she had been separated from Shue for three months when the first PDA-packed photos of her and Holmes came out last year.
Holmes also said he was living separately from Fiebig since the summer of 2022.
The couple had apparently planned on disclosing their relationship to ABC when their respective divorces were “cleaned up,” but the news of their romance hit the newsstands before they could get to it. In response to the drama, they were taken off the air in December 2022.
Meanwhile, sources told Pvnew that the affair played a major factor in both divorces, with insiders claiming that former colleagues had whispered about Holmes’ romance with Robach for years.
Robach admitted that she “wanted to die” after reports of their affair surfaced, but Holmes said that they are doing better than ever now that they have both settled their divorces.
“Relationships are hard, they’re messy, they’re not perfect. We have fought for love, and I can say I have never been happier. I am with my best friend,” Robach said on their podcast.
“Bottom line … I’m in love with this woman and she’s in love with me and we are planning a life together,” Holmes gushed.
Things were made that much easier on the couple when their exes started dating each other after bonding over Robach and Holmes’ alleged infidelity scandal.
Pvnew exclusively reported earlier this month that Shue, 56, and Fiebig, 46, have been dating for about six months.
“It turned into something else, and they’re connected over their values. It’s bigger than the affair now,” one source told us, with another insider adding, “They’re not heartbroken and sad. Everyone has moved on.”
Holmes shares daughter Sabine with Fiebig, and also shares daughter Brianna and son Jaiden with first wife Amy Ferson. He and Robach are figuring out how their blended families will celebrate the holidays together, given the complicated situation.
“Everyone would love a nuclear traditional family. And one divorce is hard enough trying to figure that out. Two divorces is even more complicated. So I think we’re trying to do what our kids would like us to do. I think we’ve let them lead the way up until now,” Robach shared on her iHeartRadio show on Tuesday.
“But we will spend time together,” she added. “We will be together. And we don’t have the exact plan in place. We’re trying to figure it out. But we’re both going to be here in New York and our daughters are going to be here in New York, and so we will piece it together.”
The lovebirds also revealed that marriage is “on the table” for them despite each being twice divorced.
