Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes say blending their families has become “effortless” despite a rocky start to their romance.
The former “GMA3” co-anchors revealed on Tuesday’s episode of their “Amy and T.J.” podcast that their respective children have started to come around to their relationship more than a year after their affair first made headlines.
“When you have a new relationship, there are divorces, there are kids involved,” Holmes explained. “You’re always trying to find the right balance between your kids and your partner, and bringing everybody together.”
Robach shares daughters Ava, 21, and Annalise, 17, with ex-husband Tim McIntosh. The exes divorced in 2009 after 13 years of marriage.
Meanwhile, Holmes is a dad to daughter Brianna and son Jaiden with ex Amy Ferson, as well as daughter Sabine, 11, with ex-wife Marilee Fiebig, to whom he was still married when his romance with Robach began.
Although most of the pair’s kids are slightly older, Holmes gushed about Robach’s special bond with his youngest daughter, whose birthday was last week.
“You’ve been great, and it’s been one of the great, great, great joys over the past several months — six months-plus — is how Sabine’s really taking it,” he said, noting that the preteen has known Robach since she was 1.
“But knowing you in a different capacity now has been really cool to watch,” Holmes, 46, continued. “Even sometimes when I pick her up from school and say, ‘Yeah, Robach is not at the house,’ and then she is like, ‘OK, well then I don’t want to come’ because she is disappointed that you’re not there.”
Robach, 50, agreed that it has “been really cool to watch” their respective families grow closer despite having known each other professionally for years.
“My daughters babysat your daughter when she was little, and I know they communicated on her birthday as well, which was very sweet,” she said.
“It’s just nice to see everything becoming normal and getting easier and effortless, actually. Because it was effort before, and maybe that was just us putting the effort on the situation, but it’s been great.”
Given the amount of daughters between the two, the couple agreed they had to let the girls “lead the way” rather than try to force them to accept the situation.
“You can’t tell a girl who to like, who to hang out with, what to think, what to do … that just doesn’t end well,” Robach joked.
“I at least had that experience growing up with my daughters, so it’s served me well on navigating all of this.”
Although Robach’s daughters have seemingly come to terms with the scandalous relationship, the former broadcaster revealed last month that the two girls were thrown for a loop when they first heard the news.
“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,” she said on their podcast.
“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,” she continued. “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.”
Although the couple claim they were both separated from their respective partners when they started dating, insiders previously told Pvnew that Fiebig was “blindsided” by the affair and thought she and Holmes had been trying “to work” on their marriage.
To make matters even more difficult, Robach’s ex-husband Andrew Shue, to whom she was married when she started seeing her then-co-host, is now dating Fiebig.
Pvnew exclusively revealed last month that the pair bonded over the traumatic experience of their cheating exes and have been together for more than six months.
Although Shue is not the father of Robach’s daughters, the trio seem to still keep in touch, as Ava and Annalise joined the “Melrose Place” alum and his sons at a concert last April.
