Gavin Newsom still remembers the exact moment he knew his marriage to Kimberly Guilfoyle would not last.
The 58-year-old California governor got candid about his four-year marriage to the 56-year-old media personality turned Trump diplomat in his forthcoming book, Young Man in a Hurry: A Memoir of Discovery, previewed by the Daily Mail.
Newsom admitted that both of them were phoning it in in their relationship while they pursued their career ambitions separately. In 2001, Newsom was a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, while Guilfoyle was an assistant district attorney in the blue city. In 2004, Newsom became San Francisco mayor and Guilfoyle entered the world of TV.
“Three days after I had been sworn in as mayor, Kimberly flew to New York to start a new job as a host for Court TV,” he recalled. “She was on a career path that would take her to Fox News and into circles of right-wing politics that could not have contrasted more with the world in which we were raised.”
But Newsom’s realization that their relationship was doomed came after he allowed same-sex marriage in San Francisco. During that time, several of his aides got married, along with now-divorced Rosie O’Donnell and Kelli Carpenter.
“I saw something in those marriages that I did not see in my own,” he wrote.
Newsom said his family saw the fallout coming early into their relationship, but both his mother, Tessa, and sister, Hillary, chose to keep their reservations to themselves.
Hillary was quoted in the book as describing Guilfoyle as “smart, quite smart, but not my type of gal,” adding that “her need for attention and love could not be met.”
“She was a little over-the-top. Overdone style. She was never not put together, but understatement was not one of her attributes,” Newsom’s sister said. “She needed to command a room. She needed to own a room. All eyes on her.”
Newsom said his mother “put on a good smile” when they got married in a December 2001 ceremony at St. Ignatius Church, followed by a reception at the Getty mansion.
“My mother was of the mind that the marriage between Kimberly and me would not last, but she chose to hide those feelings from me,” he recalled.
But his mother didn’t tuck those thoughts away permanently. Newsom revealed that Guilfoyle wasn’t with the family when Tessa chose to end her life through doctor-assisted suicide at age 55 in 2002. She had been battling an aggressive form of breast cancer.
“She had visited a day earlier,” Newsom said of Guilfoyle, “only to have my mother scold her about things she’d seen in our marriage. Kimberly left in tears. Mom had finally found a voice, it seemed.”
But Newsom’s family believed he shared the blame for their relationship woes, too. He recalled his sister telling him, “I saw a lot of adoration from her to you, Gavin. But less from you to her.” His mother, meanwhile, “was worried that I had brought a kind of passivity into the relationship, a ‘go along to get along,’ that was itself a devil’s bargain.”
“I gave only a little of myself to Kimberly. Instead of regretting this, I kept wishing I could have given a lot more to my dying mother,’ Newsom wrote. “The distance between Kimberly and me became a breach, and the breach widened into a chasm that could not be repaired.”
The couple announced their divorce in January 2005.
“When it was time to part after four years of marriage, we parted about as amicably as two people could,” he said.
Guilfoyle has since undergone a complete MAGA makeover. Apart from getting what’s been dubbed as a “Mar-a-Lago face,” she dated Donald Trump Jr. from 2018 to 2024. Last September, she was sworn in as President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Greece.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the U.S. Embassy in Athens for comment.
Newsom married Hollywood actress and filmmaker Jennifer Siebel in 2008.
