In the age of social media, it’s hard to imagine a celebrity taking out an ad in a newspaper to defend their personal life, but one A-list couple went that route in the early 1990s. In 1994, Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford paid $30,000 for an ad in The Times of London in order to address speculation about their marriage and to declare themselves “heterosexual and monogamous.” The lengthy ad also shared other details about their marriage and their plans for the future.
But, it wasn’t long after the ad hit newsstands that the celebrity marriage fell apart. Read on to find out more about the very public situation and to see what Crawford had to say about it afterward.
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According to People, Crawford and Gere met at a barbecue hosted by photographer Herb Ritts in 1988 and started dating. In 1991, they got married, but it wasn’t a lavish celebrity wedding—the couple tied the knot in Las Vegas using rings made out of aluminum foil. At the time of their nuptials, Crawford was 26 and one of the top supermodels in the world, while Gere was 42 and a hugely popular movie star—Pretty Woman had been released only a year earlier.
During their marriage, gossip circulated that both Gere and Crawford were gay. “I don’t get depressed that people constantly call me a lesbian and Richard gay,” Crawford said in 1993, according to People. “I find it amusing.” Gere reportedly told the Associated Press, “It’s kid stuff. Kids in a schoolyard.”
In an interview with Rolling Stone in 1993, Crawford said, “It’s amazing to me, considering the number of women he’s associated with. Like when does he have time to be gay? Plus, we won’t ever say he’s not gay, because he doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with being gay.” She also denied that she is a lesbian, but again made clear that there’d be nothing wrong with it if she were.
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Crawford and Gere tried to silence these rumors when they put out their Times of London ad in May 1994. The New Y0rk Times reported that it was placed in the newspaper due to the speculation their marriage was receiving in European tabloids and that it cost around $30,000.
“We got married because we love each other and we decided to make a life together,” the ad read. “We are heterosexual and monogamous and take our commitment to each other very seriously. There is not and never has been a prenuptial agreement of any kind. Reports of a divorce are totally false. There are no plans, nor have there ever been any plans for divorce. We remain very married. We both look forward to having a family.”
They then listed various causes they supported, including “AIDS research and treatment, Tibetan independence, cultural and tribal survival, international human rights, gay and lesbian rights, ecology, leukemia research and treatment, democracy movements, disarmament and nonviolence.” Finally, they asked that anyone reading be “responsible, truthful and kind.”
In an August 1994 interview with Vanity Fair, Crawford said Gere wanted to publish the ad more than she did and that he had “different things at stake.”
She continued, “I think the main thing that Richard was really upset about was not that they were saying this stuff about us but that they were saying we were lying about it, that we aren’t honest people.”
She was very open about the state of their marriage at that time, including how young she was when they got together, their differing views of their careers, and their diverging interests. She said that they were going through “growing pains” together. “For my relationship, especially now that I’m 28, I expect more,” she said.
Crawford and Gere divorced in 1995. In a 2013 interview with Oprah’s Master Class (via Entertainment Tonight), Crawford said that their age gap played a role.
Looking back on when they got together, she said, “I think a lot of what happened with Richard and I was, I was still 22 and at 22—as a young woman—I was kind of still figuring out who I was and what I wanted to be and he was already 37.” She continued, “I just think your twenties for women is such a time when you’re starting to come into your own and feel your own power and connect to your inner strength and it’s hard to do that—it’s hard to change—in a relationship, because what one person might have signed up for, all of a sudden, you’re not that anymore.”
Three years after divorcing Gere, Crawford, now 56, married businessman Rande Gerber. They are still together today and have two children, Presley and Kaia. Gere, 73, was married to actor Carey Lowell from 2002 to 2016 and they welcomed a son named Homer. He then married his current wife, political activist Alejandra Silva, with whom he welcomed two more children.