Bill de Blasio, wife Chirlane McCray separating but not divorcing, will date other people

Bill de Blasio and Chirlane McCray are separating after nearly 30 years of marriage but are not divorcing, they announced Wednesday.

The former New York City mayor and his wife plan to remain married and stay in their Park Slope home but will start dating other people, they shared in an interview with The New York Times.

“I can look back now and say, ‘Here were these inflection points where we should have been saying something to each other,’” de Blasio said. “And I think one of the things I should have said more is: ‘Are you happy? What will make you happy? What’s missing in your life?’”

De Blasio, 62, and McCray, 68, married in Brooklyn in 1994 and have two adult children together. They agreed to separate about two months ago after de Blasio asked his wife why she isn’t “lovey-dovey anymore,” which prompted a deep discussion about their relationship, McCray said.

“You can’t fake it,” McCray told The Times.

“You can feel when things are off,” de Blasio added, “and you don’t want to live that way.”

De Blasio served as mayor and McCray as first lady from 2014 until 2021. Mayor Adams succeeded him at the beginning of last year.

Their political careers took a toll on their marriage, they said.

“Everything was this overwhelming schedule, this sort of series of tasks,” de Blasio said. “And that kind of took away a little bit of our soul.”

One former top aide to the mayor had a much less flattering take on news of the couple’s break up, though, and said the very public announcement is just the latest example of de Blasio’s desire for attention now that he’s left the city’s political limelight.

“It’s another example of look-at-me behavior, and it’s unfortunate. Why is this relevant?” the once-close confidante to de Blasio told the Daily News. “I wish them peace in their lives, but shut up. Shut up. Please.”

For years, de Blasio’s aides made light of the interplay between the former mayor and first lady, especially when it came to the pet policy projects McCray took on while residing at Gracie Mansion.

But that sort of light-hearted grousing and joking from aides took on a different tenor Wednesday with news of the announcement.

The former aide who spoke with The News said he found the way it was unveiled in the Times particularly galling given the status his old boss enjoys and how he’s chosen to use it since leaving office.

“Media attention is a drug, and it’s a drug for lost souls,” the aide said. “We’ve got climate challenges. We’ve got international chaos. We’ve got migrants coming to the city by the busload. We’ve got a current mayor who’s out of his depth. If you want to do something, volunteer. If you want to do something, stop making it about you — start making it about the city that you quote-unquote ‘love.’”

In their interview with the Times, de Blasio and McCray cited the COVID-19 pandemic, which rocked the final two years of de Blasio’s second mayoral term. De Blasio, a Manhattan-born, Massachusetts-raised Democrat, ran for president in 2020, which McCray described as a “distraction” but supported nonetheless.

“This is not the kind of thing where you can break ranks,” McCray said. “That’s part of the difficulty of being part of a package.”

The couple established ground rules for the new relationship situation, which McCray says involves still living together “for the time being.”

“For the guy who took the chance on a woman who was an out lesbian and wrote an article called ‘I Am a Lesbian,’” de Blasio said, “there was a part of me that would at times say, ‘Hmmm, is this like a time bomb ticking? Is this something that you’re going to regret later on?’ So I always lived with that stuff.”