Ellen's wife Portia de Rossi had married a man for green card, but he fled with her brother's ex-wife
Ellen DeGeneres might be going through a controversial patch right now, what with her own guests and employees accusing her of having a "mean" streak and her show dropping in ratings every day, but her wife, Portia de Rossi, has had an eventful past too.
Rossi got married to the daytime talk show host in 2008 after the Supreme Court of California made it possible for same-sex couples to officially tie the knot. But back in 2005 - the year Rossi and DeGeneres made their relationship public, she told Oprah Winfrey that it took her three years to confess her real feelings to DeGeneres because she wasn’t an openly gay person back then. In fact, she had been married before, to a man named Mel Metcalfe.
In 2001, she confessed to Radar Online in an interview that she had initially gotten married to her husband because she needed to get a green card. However, she ultimately could not go through with her plan. “But I didn’t get my green card through him — I couldn’t do it at the end. By the end of our first year together, despite my desire to be attracted to him, my latent fear of my real sexuality was simmering and about to boil,” she shared.
In her memoir, 'Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain,' Rossi revealed that her marriage lasted three years after which her husband ran off with a woman named Renee Kappos, who was her brother’s ex-wife. In 1999, after her husband fled, her life hit rock-bottom as neither she nor her brother could initially believe what had happened to their respective marriages. “But when Mel left me and Renee suddenly sabotaged her marriage to my brother to be with Mel. Brother and I were left idiotically scratching our heads in disbelief,” she said.
Nevertheless, the pair worked through their grief by being beside each other “When my husband left me, my brother moved into my place… My husband ran off with his wife, so we kept each other company and we liked to go out for margaritas and Mexican food to commiserate,” added Rossi.
Although Rossi and DeGeneres crossed paths in 2000, the pair did not start dating until a few years later. Speaking with Good Housekeeping in 2017, DeGeneres gushed over her wife by saying that Rossi understood her completely. “In our vows, she recited a quote — ‘It is good to be loved. It is profound to be understood’ — and to me, that’s everything. What ‘I love you’ really means is ‘I understand you,’ and she loves me for everything that I am. She supports me and makes me happy,” DeGeneres said.
However, recently, there were reports claiming that the pair are heading for a messy split and a $450 million divorce. The first reports that their relationship had hit a rocky patch emerged last year when it was claimed that Rossi had broken down in public in Los Angeles after she and her wife seemingly talked about calling it quits. A source with knowledge of the event said the 'Scandal' actress broke down because she was scared she would lose the love of her life. "Her eyes were red and puffy, her makeup was running and she looked unsteady on her feet. It was shocking to see," the source shared.
