ICE Barbie Kristi Noem is divorcing her husband after bombshell reports revealed he has long lived a secret life online in the “bimbofication” scene, her mother says.
The former homeland security secretary’s mother, Corinne Arnold, revealed the split in an interview with the Daily Mail, saying her daughter told her she has lawyered up and is divorcing Bryon Noem, whom she has been married to for 34 years and shares three children with.
“It has been difficult, but we knew this was coming, that they were going to get divorced,” Arnold told the Mail.
The tabloid reports that Bryon has already moved out of the couple’s ranch in Castlewood, South Dakota, and has moved 20 miles away.
The Mail reports that he is still running his insurance company, but Arnold says she has not seen him in “months.”
“It’s sad,’ she said. “You have to remember that Bryon’s been in our family for many years. The sad part is that he’s a grandpa. And the little kiddies love him. We all love him, like you would your family.”
Kristi, 54, and Bryon, 56, were high school sweethearts who married in 1992. Their three children, Kassidy, 32, Kennedy, 29, and Booker, 24, have four kids among them.
Questions about their marriage first swirled in 2023, when the Mail alleged that Kristi, then the governor of South Dakota, had a close relationship with former Trump campaign aide Corey Lewandowski—rumors that spilled into her tenure at DHS.
Lewandowski, 52, denied having an affair with Kristi when reached by the Daily Beast in April. He said he has denied the relationship 10,000 times and that the call with the Beast marked denial No. 10,001.
Kristi’s mom strongly denied the affair allegations, too.
“Kristi would never do that,” she insisted to the Mail. “That’s not how I brought my kids up.”
As South Dakota governor, Kristi expressed interest in running for president someday, but did not announce a 2024 run as it became clear that Trump would seek re-election. Instead, she angled to be Trump’s running mate and even traveled to Mar-a-Lago to meet with him in February of that year—but her VP ambitions were blown up by her own words, as she revealed in her memoir that she executed her puppy, Cricket, for behaving like a puppy.
The puppy-killing story got her dropped from the veepstakes, which JD Vance eventually won, but she remained in Trump’s good graces and was appointed DHS secretary at the onset of MAGA 2.0.
At DHS, her tenure was marred by affair rumors with Lewandowski and the killing of two protesters by federal agents during an aggressive migrant crackdown in Minnesota. She was sidelined shortly after those incidents and was eventually demoted by Trump in March to a new position within DHS, special envoy for the shield of the Americas, which holds no real power.
A representative for Kristi Noem did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment on her reported intention to divorce Bryon.
Bryon’s online habits were first exposed in March by the Mail, which reported that he paid thousands of dollars to online “bimbofication” cam girls, who pump excessive amounts of saline into their breasts to mimic those of a real-life Barbie. To some of these models, he also reportedly sent photos of himself with balloons stuffed under women’s clothing, imitating huge breasts.
Among the women with whom Bryon allegedly had a relationship was Shy Sotomayor, a 30-year-old “dominatrix” from Colorado Springs. Sotomayor told Uncloseted Media that Bryon asked to be called Crystal and said he wanted to become a woman.
Security experts warned that the nature of Bryon’s secret life could have made his wife vulnerable to coercion or blackmail while she was running the Department of Homeland Security, making his fetish lifestyle a national security risk.
