WHY THEIR SHOCKING ROMANCE ENDED Two decades after teacher Mary Kay Letourneau went to jail for having a sexual relationship with 12-year-old Vili Fualaau, the couple call it quits after two kids and 12 years of marriage.
Two decades after the former teacher went to jail for having a sexual relationship with her 12-year-old student, the couple call it quits after two kids and 12 years of marriage
Out shopping for cleaning supplies at the local Target in a Seattle suburb last February, 55-year-old married mother Mary Kay Letourneau made small talk about the weather with Tanya Becker, an acquaintance whose children attended the same school as two of Letourneau’s daughters. “She was really well-put-together,” recalls Becker, 41. “She had a big smile, she seemed like she was very happy. Everything about her screamed ‘soccer mom.’ She was just so normal.”
But little has ever been normal about Letourneau’s tumultuous life. The former primary-school teacher at Shorewood Elementary School in Burien, Washington state, shocked the world in 1996 when as a 34-year-old married mother of four she began an illicit—and illegal—affair with Year 6 student Vili Fualaau, then 12. The pair married in 2005—after Letourneau spent two stints in prison for second-degree child rape—and had two children together. Now, after raising their daughters, Audrey, 20, and Georgia, 18, the pair hit international headlines again after Fualaau, 33, filed for legal separation from Letourneau on May 9, ending a relationship of more than 20 years. “This was a couple in love,” says friend and former lawyer David Gehrke. “They were devoted to each other.”
News of the separation has shocked many friends who have known the couple for years. “I can’t even imagine them getting divorced,” says longtime family friend Lydia Edgmon. “They were a happy, beautiful couple.” By all accounts, the couple’s controversial 12-year marriage seemed to those closest to the pair like a traditional union. She worked as a paralegal; he was a part-time DJ who supplemented his income by working at a home-improvement store. Together, they lived in a modest home outside Seattle, where they would occasionally be seen around town on date nights to dinner and the movies. Letourneau would often appear with Fualaau at Seattle-area clubs where he Dj-ed, mingling with partiers while he worked. At one memorable costume event, she showed up dressed as Max from the children’s classic book Where the Wild Things Are. Says a fellow DJ, “He was always happy to see her. She was all over him, and he liked it.”
It was that sense of togetherness that made their friends think the marriage was solid. “They’ve been supportive of each other,” says friend Anne Bremner, who adds that the couple adored their two daughters. “The girls have done really well,” says Bremner. “They’re very accomplished. They are blessed to have their parents.”
But there were still issues in the marriage. The fellow DJ recalls that Fualaau would sometimes complain about his wife. “He said she nagged a lot,” he says. “She wanted him to man up and take responsibility. She handled everything, like the money,
the chores, all of it, and she would get on him if she thought he wasn’t doing his part. ”
Others close to the couple say that the once white-hot passion cooled as the couple faced a future of being empty-nesters. “Sometimes people who are totally in love have trouble staying in love,” says lawyer David Gehrke. “They slowly drift apart. One day, you wake up and realise that things are different with your partner. So I’m not surprised they got married, and I’m not surprised that they are separating.”
Given the controversial way that the couple’s life began, to some the split seemed long overdue. Letourneau first met Fualaau when he was in Year 2; she was his teacher. Four years later, when he was again her student in Year 6, the relationship turned sexual. At the time, Letourneau and thenhusband Steve had four young children: Steven Jr, Mary Claire, Nicholas and Jacqueline. Steve found love letters she had written to Fualaau; a relative reported the liaison to the school and she was arrested. After pleading guilty to two counts of second-degree child rape in 1997, Letourneau was sentenced to serve 71/
2 years in prison with the sentence suspended for all but six months, on the condition she keep away from the teen. But weeks after her release, she was caught having sex with Fualaau in her car and sentenced to an additional seven years. “They had backchannel contact during the time they weren’t supposed to be talking,” says Gehrke. “They were in contact. ”
It all proved too much for Letourneau’s marriage. Steve filed for divorce and got custody of the children, who had sporadic contact with their mother over the years. “I’ve moved on,” Steve Letourneau tells WHO, “and I have nothing to say.” Though her older children, now grown, resumed contact with their mother after she married Fualaau, none has yet commented on the separation.
Now, Letourneau and Fualaau face single life—something he has never experienced. In a 2006 interview with WHO, Fualaau (who declined to be interviewed for this story) conceded pondering how different things could have been. “I think, what would my life have been like if I had never made a move on Mary?” he said. “What if I had kept it as a crush and left it at that? Where would I be and where would she be—what would life be like? I can never see more than the question.” Now, he seems to be ready to see what his future can be without her. “They will always stay friends,” says friend Lydia Edgmon. “Nothing will separate them from being friends forever.”