Moving past the turmoil. More than a decade after a headline-making cheating scandal, Tiger Woods and Elin Nordegren have put the past behind them to coparent their two kids.
Woods and Nordegren met in 2001 through golfer Jesper Parnevik, whom she was nannying for at the time.
“Elin told me that he didn’t make a great impression on her at first,” Nordegren’s friend Sandra Sobieraj Westfall revealed in the 2021 HBO documentary, Tiger. “She had her opinions about celebrities and they were not high. And she’s very shy so the idea of joining that world was not appealing to her. And when he asked her out, I think she turned him down at first. … She gradually was convinced that she should give him a chance and so they did go out.”
Three years later, the twosome tied the knot and went on to welcome a daughter, Sam, in 2007 and a son, Charlie, in 2009. The same year Charlie was born, news broke that Woods had several affairs, including a full-fledged relationship with Rachel Uchitel. Nordegren confronted Woods about his indiscretions on Thanksgiving in November 2009. The twosome finalized their divorce the following August.
“I have been through the stages of disbelief and shock, to anger and ultimately grief over the loss of the family I so badly wanted for my children,” Nordegren said in her only post-split interview in August 2010. “I also feel stronger than I ever have. I have confidence in my beliefs, my decisions and myself.”
Five years later, Woods shed light on their marital woes during an interview with Time.
“In hindsight, it’s not how I would change 2009 and how it all came about. It would be having a more open, honest relationship with my ex-wife,” he said. “When it comes down to it, right down to it, it’s just having a more open, honest relationship with my ex-wife when we were married. Our frustrations would have come out if we had talked about it and been open and honest with each other. Which we are now, and it’s absolutely fantastic.”
During a 2016 interview, Woods opened up to Charlie Rose about telling his kids about his past infidelities.
“I’ve said, ‘Everybody makes mistakes, and the reason why Mommy’s living in her house and Daddy’s living in his house is because Daddy made mistakes, and it’s OK,’” he recalled.
While Woods started seeing girlfriend Erica Herman in 2017, Nordegren has been publicly linked to retired football player Jordan Cameron since 2019.
Scroll through for a timeline of the former spouses’ ups and downs over the years:
