Carol McGiffin has admitted she ‘doesn’t even know’ why she married ex-husband Chris Evans.
The Loose Women star, 66, was married to the DJ for seven years from 1991 until 1998.
At the time the couple were both working in radio – having previously started working together in 1988 as co-hosts of the Chris Evans shows on GLR.
Over the years Carol has spoken about their volatile relationship several times, once revealing she got ‘swept along’ in deciding to tie the knot with Chris, now 60.
She’s now reflected on her first marriage again, explaining how she regrets walking down the aisle as ‘for quite a lot of the time’ she ‘didn’t like’ her husband.
‘I didn’t want to be married to him anymore anyway, and I don’t even know why we got married,’ she said in a new interview.
Speaking on the Suddenly Single podcast, Carol revealed that marrying Chris was a ‘big mistake’ and that ‘for quite a lot of the time,’ she ‘didn’t like’ her husband.
Although Carol and Chris split after two years of marriage, it was another five before their divorce was finalised.
In 2019 Carol said during a discussion on Loose Women that she was ‘swept along’ during her romance with Chris and ‘convinced myself I couldn’t live without him’.
She then took aim, declaring: ‘He was very manipulative. Anyone who thinks I married him for his money, that’s nonsense because I had more money than him at the time.
‘He was nothing without me, nothing. I’m glad it all went a bit wrong. I persevered with it and I was determined to make it work.’
Nearly a decade earlier she wrote in her memoir, Oh, Carol!, that while she didn’t regret their marriage, it turned her into a ‘crazy, dependent, idiotic human being bearing absolutely no resemblance to the person that I was when I met him’.
‘Chris was like a Class A drug, and I was well and truly addicted,’ she continued.
However, she revealed they ‘argued all the time’ about things she declared were ‘pathetic’.
At the same time, she accused him of ‘trying to make her jealous’ by ‘staying out late, flirting with other girls and hanging out with ex-girlfriends’.
Although the pair had broken up and got back together several times, in 1991 Carol said had every intention of ending it for good – but ended up engaged, a decision she said was against her ‘better judgment’.
Two years later – after a series of explosive outbursts including one in which Carol claim Chris hurled her full-length-mirror over the balcony of their mezzanine – he announced the end of their marriage on his radio show.
‘I felt like I’d been hit by a truck. He’d just announced on air that our marriage was over without even having the decency to talk to me first,’ she wrote in 2010.
Although they eventually tried to give things another go, their relationship ended for good in 1993.
In her memoir Carol said Chris had been ‘exhausting to be around’, revealing they were no longer friends and that the memories she was left with of him were ‘not very nice’.
Carol went on to marry current husband Mark Cassidy in 2018.
Meanwhile Chris caused controversy in 2001 when he married teenage pop star Billie Piper, who was 17 years his junior.
They eventually separated three years later and he’s since gone on to marry golfer Natasha Shishmanian. The couple wed in 2007 and have four children – Noah, 17, Eli, 13, and twins Walt and Boo, seven.
Carol was previously a panellist on Loose Women from 2000 until 2013, and again from 2018 until 2023. She also competed on Celebrity Big Brother in 2013.
In 2005 Chris joined BBC Radio 2, where he presented several shows until 2018, when he then moved to Virgin Radio UK. He also previously hosted Top Gear for a year.
Metro has contacted representatives for Chris Evans for comment.
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