Billy Bush and wife, Sydney
“After almost 20 years of marriage, they have separated for the moment to evaluate their life together,” the TV personality’s rep confirms in a statement to US Weekly. “They love each other and their children deeply and are committed to a bright future.”
The former couple tied the knot in April 1998. They share three daughters: Josie, Mary and Lillie, MSN reported.
The breakup comes nearly one year after the leak of Bush’s infamous Access Hollywood tape, in which Donald Trump bragged to him about flirting with a married woman later identified as Bush’s cohost Nancy O’Dell. “I’m automatically attracted to beautiful [women]. I just start kissing them,” the now-president, 71, said in the 2005 clip. “It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the p–sy. You can do anything!”
After the shocking tape made headlines, Bush was fired from the Today show. Trump, meanwhile, brushed the lewd conversation off as “locker room talk.”
“I am not grateful for the moment,” the former Access Hollywood host told The Hollywood Reporter in May. “But I’m grateful for what I’ve gotten out of it. I’m grateful that it hit me all the way to my core. … When you have a big, traumatic event, you go through stages, and it led to acceptance and understanding. And then I found myself in a place of soul searching. And I developed a commitment to become a better, fuller man.”
Bush also spoke about having difficulty explaining the tape to Davis and their children. “My [then] 15-year-old, Mary, called me from boarding school, and she was in tears,” he recounted to the magazine, adding that his wife had “been very supportive from the very beginning.”