John Stamos is looking back on his divorce from Rebecca Romijn with a mix of pain, distance and unexpected warmth toward the man she later married.
During the June 10 episode of The Really Good Podcast, the Full House alum said his split from Romijn was deeply painful because he did not want the marriage to end.
Stamos and Romijn married in 1998 after several years together. They announced their separation in 2004, and their divorce was finalized in 2005.
Years later, Stamos said the breakup still stands out as one of the hardest periods of his life, even though both have since remarried and built new families.
Stamos Said the Divorce Took Years to Process
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Stamos told host Bobbi Althoff that the divorce “broke my heart.” When asked why, he gave a direct answer.
“Because I didn’t want to get divorced,” Stamos said, according to People. “She wanted to. It took me a long time to get over it.”
The comments echo what Stamos has said before about that period. In his 2023 memoir, If You Would Have Told Me, he wrote about the emotional fallout from the marriage ending and later told People that writing those chapters was difficult.
People reported that Stamos previously described the divorce as “shattering” and said his healing process “was not healthy,” including a period when he drank heavily.
He Had Kind Words for Jerry O’Connell
Romijn married Jerry O’Connell in 2007, and the couple share twin daughters Charlie and Dolly. Stamos married Caitlin McHugh in 2018, and they share a son, Billy.
On the podcast, Stamos said he recently crossed paths with O’Connell at a party. Instead of describing the moment as tense, he said O’Connell was friendly from the start.
“He was very sweet,” Stamos said, according to People. “We were at a party together and he came over and was super nice. He couldn’t have been sweeter.”
Stamos also called O’Connell “very, very funny and very charming,” and said he has not seen Romijn since the divorce.
The Memoir Previously Put the Old Marriage Back in Headlines
Stamos’ latest comments come after his memoir reopened public discussion about the former couple.
Romijn told Entertainment Tonight in January 2024 that she was “very surprised” and “incredibly shocked” by the way she was portrayed in the book. She said she felt “sort of blindsided” by the headlines around it, but added that she did not want to help sell the memoir by continuing to discuss them.
Stamos said Romijn has a good life, noted that she has children and said she and O’Connell are doing well.
Years after a difficult breakup, Stamos is still describing the pain of the divorce, but he is no longer speaking about the people around it like enemies.