LOVE, MARRIAGE & SCANDAL
The legendary rugby player’s love-life made headlines many times over the years, but in the end his greatest loves were his children
IN THE end his kids were the greatest loves of his life and he took every opportunity to share how he lived just for them. He wanted more time with them, he wanted to share things with them, he wanted them to know how much he loved them.
Jordan (13) and Kylie (10) were everything to Joost and his life changed when they came along. But before they were even so much as a twinkle in his eye he’d won many hearts.
The young rugby star was always something of a charmer – tall, strapping and athletic with piercing blue eyes and long dark lashes.
Even a British rugby writer remarked on his looks after the then 23-year-old Joost scored two tries against the Scots on their home ground, Murrayfield. “Scrumhalves aren’t supposed to look like this,” he wrote. “He looks like a movie star.”
We look at Joost’s often tumultuous love-life.
HIS FIRSTLOVE
Joost could have played the field in every sense of the word – but his heart was already taken back then. It belonged to his high school sweetheart, Marléne Terblanche, and it seemed like the classic love story: he was the school’s best rugby player; she the academic achiever.
In December 1995, Joost (then 24) and Marléne (then 23) wed in the garden of Klein Hanover, his smallholding outside Roodeplaat Dam near Pretoria. They spent their honeymoon on a cruise ship in the Caribbean – the perfect start to what seemed like a fairytale romance.
TROUBLE IN PARADISE
At first everything went well. Marléne, an avid animal lover, settled into the thatchroofed house on the smallholding and Joost built her an aviary where she cared for barn owls and other birds of prey. She had seven dogs and Joost bought her a pregnant donkey for her birthday.
She called the donkey Priscilla after the movie The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert and named the foal Laatlam. But for Marléne and Joost there was no sign of children and four years after their wedding Marléne complained about the lonely life of a rugby widow.
She was sharply criticised for speaking out. “Women write to me and tell me their husbands also work a lot and I need to deal with it – they don’t understand,”
Marléne said at the time. “Their husbands are probably doctors or lawyers who work long hours but still come home at night. Joost was away for eight months last year.”
In early 2002 news leaked the couple were getting a divorce. They later revealed they’d made the decision to split the year before.
DIVORCE AND FINDING NEWLOVE
The split was amicable, Marléne told YOU in 2002 – she and Joost realised things just weren’t working. She even knew about Amor Vittone, then the presenter of the Lotto show on TV and also a singer.
The fact their impending divorce made its way into the media meant things had to be speeded up, she added. “We’d figured out how to tell our family and friends and we’d drawn up one or two contracts when the bomb dropped and we decided to finalise everything immediately.
“It was the most difficult time of the divorce – no one would leave us alone. We’d actually already dealt with the heartache but then people started thinking Joost had left me for Amor.”
But she had nothing but good wishes for them, Marléne said. He needed someone “who could keep up with his fast-paced lifestyle. I actually think he and Amor are a good match.”
Marléne (44), who’s remarried and has two young kids, remained friends with Joost and was one of the first people his family contacted when he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND).
A LITTLE (BLUE) BULL IS BORN
Joost and Amor announced their engagement a few months after his divorce became final and wed in a small Tuscan-style church in Johannesburg in December 2002.
In January 2004 they welcomed their little boy, Jordan. Joost had read American basketball player Michael Jordan’s biography and “his life story touched me deeply,” he said. “Like me, he also had a second rally in his career lateish in life. People said two years ago I was over the hill and wouldn’t be a Springbok again. Michael is also a successful family man.”
Joost was smitten with his son from the word go. “Our life revolves around our son,” he said. “I’d sacrifice everything for him. I’d live in a shack and work my fingers to the bone if I had to for him.”
KYLIE MAKES HER APPEARANCE
Two years later Amor delivered a daughter via Caesarean section. “She’s smaller than my hands!” an elated Joost exclaimed as he picked her up. “We’re truly blessed to have a boy and a girl.”
Shortly before Kylie’s birth, Amor and Joost were named YOU’s celeb couple of the year and the pair were dubbed South Africa’s answer to David and Victoria Beckham.
‘Our life revolves around our son. I’d sacrifice everything for him’
The only sign of trouble was when Amor collapsed twice at performances – first in October 2007, then in September 2008. Doctors ascribed the fainting to low blood pressure, high stress levels and an iron deficiency, but a few months later she revealed she and Joost had been bombarded by ominous phone calls for the past 18 months.
“I’ll get a call on my cellphone and a voice will tell me exactly what I’m doing and where my children and I are,” she said. “Or someone will phone Joost with threats. During one of my recent performances Joost’s cellphone rang. The voice said he was in the audience looking at me and they want a ransom in return for the safety of myself and the children.”
The torment continued in January 2009 when a caller phoned both Joost and Amor and said, “Enjoy the media.”
THE BOMB EXPLODES
On the afternoon of Wednesday 11 February 2009 an unknown man called the Johannesburg office of celebrity magazine Heat, claiming he had a compromising video in which Joost and a stripper used drugs.
Heat bought the video but before the issue – which contained screen grabs from the video – hit the street, Sunday newspaper Rapport broke the news on the front page: “Joost in sex video,” the headline read.
Joost denied he was the man in the video and insisted he’d never cheated on his wife. “I tried to get my hands on the video. How can I comment on something I haven’t seen?” he said.
On the Monday he got to see the video but maintained it was a lookalike, not him. Amor, who apparently spent the weekend in tears, refused to watch the footage. YOU followed up the story, showing a picture of the couple under the heading, “Closer than ever.”
But by the end of March a well-known sportswoman came forward to say she was Joost’s lover. Speaking to YOU under a pseudonym she said, “Joost isn’t telling the truth. We’ve been intimate twice since they married: once when Amor was pregnant with their son and again about two years ago.”
Her name was eventually made public: she was Charmaine Gale-Weavers, a former high-jumper. The stripper in the video was also named as Marilize van Em men is of Hartbeespoort, North West.
Joost and Amor continued to insist all was well in their marriage but the strain started to show.
Joost collapsed in July 2009 after complaining of a pressing pain in his chest while he and Amor were having dinner with friends. He spent four days in hospital but the cause was never revealed – it could be because of un-unusual stress, doctors had said when asked for comment.
The episode was a turning point for Joost. He decided to come clean and in his 2009 biography, Joost: The Man In The Mirror by David Gemmell, admitted it was him in the video.
“I hadn’t reckoned on nearly losing my life, that I’d be attached to life support for 12 hours. When I saw my wife and children after leaving the hospital I was embarrassed. I realised I had to fix my life,” he told YOU at the end of 2009.
“I made many mistakes. I apologise to the people who believed in me. And who trusted me. I was wrong. I told my wife I’d committed adultery; I’d become involved with another woman.”
At first Amor vowed to stick by him but by June 2010 she said she “needed space”.
“I’m no longer happy. I no longer trust Joost. I stayed for all these months because of my kids but I also owe it to them to be happy again.”
Jordan (then 6) and Kylie (then 4) stayed with Amor and Joost moved in with a friend. Two months later they announced they were divorcing after seven years of marriage.
THE BEGINNING OFTHE END
Then the next bombshell hit: Joost was seriously ill. On Friday 13 May 2011 it was reported he’d been diagnosed with MND.
Amor was devastated – but a month later she told YOU Joost didn’t want to answer her questions or provide details of his condition and it was clear she
‘We both got hurt in all this. He’s still the father of my children’
didn’t believe him.
Social media also climbed on the doubting bandwagon but uncertainty vanished when Joost opened up to YOU at the end of February 2012, talking about his illness, his mistakes and his hope that his kids would one day be proud of him.
“I don’t want to keep any more lies inside,” he said. “From now on I want to live a clean life. I have the privilege of being able to set things right with everyone.”
Yet the drama continued: barely a month later he was back in the news amid rumours of a romance with Dr Jody Pearl, the attractive divorced neurologist who’d been treating him and supported him when he’d launched his J9 Foundation for MND sufferers shortly before.
Amor said she believed the relationship between her husband and the neurologist rologist was more than just professional. Joost denied her claims and was upset when Dr Pearl decided to stop treating him because of all the gossip. “Now I’ve not only lost the best MND doctor in the country but also a good friend,” Joost said bitterly.
A FAMILY TORN APART
Joost and Amor’s fighting continued to make headlines until September 2012. Joost complained he wasn’t seeing his children enough and accused Amor of seeing other men. Bitterness and resentment ruled – until one evening in October 2012. Joost went to Amor’s house to see the kids and the estranged couple decid-decided to thrash out their problems.
“We spoke for a long time and we both found answers and solutions,” she said. “I told him I want him to be there for the kids; he said the past was in the past but that there was still a lot we could do in the future.
“We both got hurt in all this. He’s still the father of my children. They want to know why Dadda is ill, why Dadda can no longer walk or talk properly.
“I don’t want to have regrets one day. I don’t want our kids to blame me one day when he might no longer be there.”
The couple also agreed to abandon the divorce case and the kids were thrilled. Shortly afterwards Amor was booking a holiday for her and the children to Mauritius and Jordan asked if his dad was going too. “Something told me I had to invite him along,” Amor said.
“Joost had tears in his eyes when I asked him.”
It was their first family holiday in three years.
A FAMILY AGAIN
In the final years of his life Joost lived in Dainfern, the luxury estate in Midrand, Joburg, where Amor and the kids lived too. He often slept over in Jordan’s room and had supper with the family. Amor would cut his meat and help him up and down the stairs. She supported him emotionally, including on his regular trips to London for medical treatment.
After his condition worsened to the point he needed full-time care, Joost still went along when one of his carers took Jordan to school in the morning. But once he had to start using an oxygen machine to help him breathe this ritual came to an end.
Joost fought to the end against the disease that robbed him of his mobility, speech and ability to breathe freely. For the sake of the kids he clung to life but in the end he couldn’t fight any more.