Amy Robach and T. J. Holmes attend the Disney 2022 Upfront presentation on May 17, 2022, in New York. (Charles Sykes, Charles Sykes)
During the launch of their new podcast Tuesday, loved-up former “GMA:3” co-hosts T.J. Holmes and Amy Robach may have left out an important part of the story about their removal from their “dream jobs” at ABC News last year.
Soon after the Daily Mail revealed in November 2022 that the married anchors were involved in a secret romance, reports began to emerge that Holmes allegedly had extramarital affairs with three other female colleagues at ABC after he began working at the network in 2014.
These women all held subordinate positions at the network, according to reports, a situation that should have created serious workplace concerns for ABC in the post-#MeToo era. Two of Holmes’ alleged lovers at ABC women were in their 20s, as New York magazine reported. One, according to the Daily Mail, was a 24-year-old intern who began having sex with him in 2015, including in his office. At the time, the 37-year-old Holmes had been married to his wife, Marilee Fieberg, for five years.
The intern, according to the Daily Mail, looked up to the 37-year-old anchor as a mentor. A source, who knew the intern well at the time, told the Daily Mail, that Holmes “was a predator who took full advantage of his position, and he was reckless.” The experience left the young woman “feeling uncomfortable and used.”
During the launch of the “Amy and T.J. Podcast,” Holmes and Robach said nothing about his other alleged workplace indiscretions as they spoke for the first time about their romance, their painful departure from ABC and the tabloid drama that engulfed their lives in late 2022 and early 2023.
Holmes briefly alluded to some personal “troubles” in recent years and how Holmes helped him get through those dark times. But he said that discussions about those troubles, when he admitted he was in “bad shape,” would have to wait “for another episode.”
With that, the couple closed the door on addressing a potentially important dimension to their story, which centers on questions about their workplace conduct at ABC. They instead focused on presenting themselves as sympathetic protagonists in a story about the triumph of love against great odds. Holmes described himself and Robach as “the folks who who lost the jobs we love because we love each other,” while Robach thanked all the people in their lives who “suspended judgement.”
The duo made a point of insisting that they never “cheated” on their ex-spouses, explaining that their romance began in the summer of 2022, only after they already had begun to extricate themselves from their marriages. Holmes’ wife of 12 years was attorney Fiebig and they share of 10-year-old daughter, while Holmes had been married to former “Melrose Place” actor Andrew Shue for 10 years. (In a strange twist, news broke Tuesday that Fiebig and Shue are now dating, after initially bonding over their shared heartbreak.)
“To be clear, we were outed as being in a relationship, but everyone else thought we were being outed as adulterers — being outed as cheating on our spouses — and it wasn’t the case,” Holmes claimed.
However, within hours of Holmes and Robach insisting they never cheated, sources close to the situation talked to Page Six and offered up a different timeline for when their friendship turned romantic, A chronology of the Holmes and Robach drama, created by Vulture, mentioned reports that suggest their affair could have begun in March 2022, or even earlier. Vulture also cited Page Six reports, which said that Fiebig was “blindsided” by the affair, in part because she considered Robach to be a good friend, who may have known about Holmes’ alleged three-year affair with a “Good Morning America” producer.
During Tuesday’s podcast episode, Holmes’ alleged affair with the “GMA” producer definitely didn’t come up. The duo seemed eager to justify their actions with regard to ABC. They hinted that they didn’t think it was fair for them to lose their jobs, even though they acknowledged that they had failed to inform their bosses about their relationship. They said they planned to do so later in 2022, and thought they had time.
Robach said their romance did not “technically” violate any network policies, while Holmes said: “I hadn’t even told my mom about the divorce, so why the hell am I thinking about telling an excutive at the network about it? That’s where are heads were at.”
The couple’s defenders have pointed out that they were adults involved in a consensual relationship. It could also be said that they were colleagues of equal stature at ABC News — unlike the alleged situations involving Holmes and the other network employees.
Holmes and Robach were initially taken off the air in early December 2022, after which reports of Holmes’ other alleged affairs began to trickle out. An internal review was launched, which looked at whether Holmes and Robach’s actions violated the morality clauses of their network contracts. The site Semafor also reported that the review would look into Holmes’ reported relationships with other ABC employees.
After Holmes and Robach were finally let go from ABC in February, New York magazine’s The Cut site did a deep dive into how their workplace relationship fit into the “horned-up” office culture at ABC. In this culture, there were “constant rumors about office hookups, including among the company’s top brass,” which made younger employees feel it was “normal to sleep with or date a senior colleague.”
The Cut also reported on another of Holmes’ alleged affairs, which began soon after he arrived at the network in 2014 and was working as an anchor on the graveyard shift. A then-27-year-old digital news associate on the shift told The Cut that she found Holmes to be charismatic. She was flattered by his attention and began meeting him for sex, including in his office or at a hotel near ABC’s Upper West Side headquarters.
Having sex in Holmes’ office didn’t seem “crazy” to the employee, given what she describes as ABC News’ “rampant culture of sex.” She also told The Cut that certain women were promoted after they had affairs with executives. “It was a pretty scandalous place,” she said, especially on the overnight shift. The affair dwindled after Holmes left this shift to focus on “Good Morning America.”
By 2016, Holmes reportedly began the affair with the “GMA” producer, who was married at the time, according to Page Six. That affair ended in 2019, when Fiebig found emails from the producer to her husband, Page Six said. The following year, Holmes celebrated his 10th anniversary with Fiebig by writing on Facebook: “Despite my best efforts, she remained married to me … That’s not hyperbole. I’m not being dramatic. I gave her plenty of reasons, excuses, and opportunities to walk her fine ass out the doooooooor.”
On Tuesday’s podcast, Holmes appeared to allude to this marital turmoil when he said that Holmes “helped me out” during a difficult time in his life. He said she lifted his spirits by encouraging him to go running or to try meditation. Holmes also said that he and Robach “got closer during” this time — only platonically, he insisted. “You’ve been my best friend through all that,” he said.
Later in the podcast, Holmes said that dealing with those troubles in 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 probably “equipped” him to handle the fall-out of their scandal and the loss of their jobs at ABC. “Those years, I was a mess. I was an absolute mess,” Holmes said. “But going through what I went through at the time, and putting good practices in place, made me better equipped to deal with this.”
But as Holmes said, whatever he went through at the time — that’s “for another episode.”
Originally published at Martha Ross