Bill de Blasio and Chirlane McCray Announce Separation in Weirdly Candid Detail
- 8 months ago
Bill de Blasio and Chirlane McCray Announce Separation in Weirdly Candid Detail.
About two months ago, after another stale Saturday night of binge-watching television at their Brooklyn home, Bill de Blasio and Chirlane McCray surprised themselves.
It began with an offhand remark: “Why aren’t you lovey-dovey anymore?” Mr. de Blasio, the former New York City mayor, asked, according to Ms. McCray, his wife.
It moved quickly, both said, into the sort of urgently searching dialogue that had been necessary for years but avoided until that moment: a full accounting of their relationship, what they wanted, what they were not getting.
“You can’t fake it,” Ms. McCray said Tuesday from their kitchen table.
“You can feel when things are off,” Mr. de Blasio said, “and you don’t want to live that way.”
They made their decision that night.
Mr. de Blasio and Ms. McCray are separating.
They are not planning to divorce, they said, but will date other people. They will continue to share the Park Slope townhouse where they raised their two children, now in their 20s — the vinyl-sided hub of a thoroughly modern political family whose mixed-race symbolism helped send a spindly progressive long shot to City Hall.
As with much about their marriage, its strain is imbued with civic resonance, a decade after the pair became what was then the most significant and dissected biracial couple in American politics.
And as with much about their marriage, they see lessons for others even in its tumult, both for workaday couples negotiating the challenges of growing old together and for the small subset who expose themselves to the uncommon glare of public scrutiny.
“I can look back now and say, ‘Here were these inflection points where we should have been saying something to each other,’” Mr. de Blasio said. “And I think one of the things I should have said more is: ‘Are you happy? What will make you happy? What’s missing in your life?’”
It is easy to forget now — after two uneven terms, a calamitous 2020 presidential bid and a decade of slashing tabloid headlines by turns earned and gratuitous — precisely what it felt like to see Mr. de Blasio and Ms. McCray step into power.
They were visually, viscerally distinctive, particularly after 12 years of Michael R. Bloomberg — a living testament, supporters said, to the breadth and promise of New York: Black and white, short and tall, inclined to dance in public. They were so affectionate at news conferences that aides sometimes winced.
Over a nearly three-hour interview, during which they cupped hands sporadically and once high-fived in agreement, Mr. de Blasio, 62, and Ms. McCray, 68, were alternately wistful and upbeat, self-critical and defiant.
Rather than issue a terse joint statement to announce what they called a trial separation — the carefully worded fate of so many political marriages before theirs — the two suggested they wanted to get considerably more off their chest
About two months ago, after another stale Saturday night of binge-watching television at their Brooklyn home, Bill de Blasio and Chirlane McCray surprised themselves.
It began with an offhand remark: “Why aren’t you lovey-dovey anymore?” Mr. de Blasio, the former New York City mayor, asked, according to Ms. McCray, his wife.
It moved quickly, both said, into the sort of urgently searching dialogue that had been necessary for years but avoided until that moment: a full accounting of their relationship, what they wanted, what they were not getting.
“You can’t fake it,” Ms. McCray said Tuesday from their kitchen table.
“You can feel when things are off,” Mr. de Blasio said, “and you don’t want to live that way.”
They made their decision that night.
Mr. de Blasio and Ms. McCray are separating.
They are not planning to divorce, they said, but will date other people. They will continue to share the Park Slope townhouse where they raised their two children, now in their 20s — the vinyl-sided hub of a thoroughly modern political family whose mixed-race symbolism helped send a spindly progressive long shot to City Hall.
As with much about their marriage, its strain is imbued with civic resonance, a decade after the pair became what was then the most significant and dissected biracial couple in American politics.
And as with much about their marriage, they see lessons for others even in its tumult, both for workaday couples negotiating the challenges of growing old together and for the small subset who expose themselves to the uncommon glare of public scrutiny.
“I can look back now and say, ‘Here were these inflection points where we should have been saying something to each other,’” Mr. de Blasio said. “And I think one of the things I should have said more is: ‘Are you happy? What will make you happy? What’s missing in your life?’”
It is easy to forget now — after two uneven terms, a calamitous 2020 presidential bid and a decade of slashing tabloid headlines by turns earned and gratuitous — precisely what it felt like to see Mr. de Blasio and Ms. McCray step into power.
They were visually, viscerally distinctive, particularly after 12 years of Michael R. Bloomberg — a living testament, supporters said, to the breadth and promise of New York: Black and white, short and tall, inclined to dance in public. They were so affectionate at news conferences that aides sometimes winced.
Over a nearly three-hour interview, during which they cupped hands sporadically and once high-fived in agreement, Mr. de Blasio, 62, and Ms. McCray, 68, were alternately wistful and upbeat, self-critical and defiant.
Rather than issue a terse joint statement to announce what they called a trial separation — the carefully worded fate of so many political marriages before theirs — the two suggested they wanted to get considerably more off their chest