A large number of high-profile couples have called it quits this year, from Kim Kardashian and Kanye West to Bill and Melinda Gates. And now, Adam Carolla and his wife of 19 years, Lynette, are the newest additions to that list.
On Friday, the radio personality announced the sad news at the beginning of his podcast, The Adam Carolla Show, and seemed to imply that the split was not his idea. “We’re going to start the show with some sad personal news. Lynette and I are getting divorced,” he said. “It’s not something that I wanted to get or to do, I’m a product of divorce, Lynette’s a product of divorce…No one ever signs up to get divorced.” He went on to explain that they’ve “been separated for a few months, it’s hard. The kids come first, and they have. They’re doing well.” In fact, he joked, “Some say too well, I wanted a little devastation. I did not get much devastation.” Carolla and Lynette got married in September 2002 after six years of dating, welcoming their twins Natalia and Sonny—who turn 15 next month—in 2006.
He went on to explain, “It’s been a difficult time. We’ve been together for 25 years, we’re very different human beings, we have different sets of philosophies, that’s for sure. It’s not an event, it’s not somebody was cheating, it’s not chronic gambling or COVID, it’s really just two people that were just that different and just had completely different processes and approaches to life and just couldn’t meet in the middle somewhere.” He added that he definitely never saw the split coming, confessing, “It’s hard, it’s a weird thing. Everyone gets divorced—or a lot of people get divorced—but it just never was in my cards. I guess I didn’t have it as an option. My thing was like, whatever isn’t working, we’ll make it work. But ultimately, if you can’t make it work then it’s probably for the good, so I’m in a pretty good place.”
Carolla said that despite the initial shock of the breakup, his relationship with his estranged wife is actually “okay” and they’ve figured out a “nesting” schedule for their kids so that he and Lynette are the ones rotating in and out of the home instead of their children. “We’re doing nesting now, so you stay at the house, the kids don’t leave the house,” he explained. “It’s much better. When my parents got divorced, my dad just moved out and crashed on the sofa at my grandparents house.” He added that, currently, his “number one feeling is sort of shame, embarrassment. I think divorce feels like a failure.” But he knows that, “Ultimately it’s better, my life’s better, I’m fine with it…for me I’m sort of philosophical.”
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