Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and his wife, Chirlane McCray, announced they’re separating after 30 years of marriage — without filing for divorce and while still living together for now.
In an extended interview published in the New York Times Wednesday, the pair explained that their union had grown stagnant and they needed a change.
“I just want to have fun,” McCray said before quickly turning to de Blasio adding: “It’s not that we haven’t had fun.”
“Thank you, honey,” he said, according to The New York Times.
When reached by NBC News, the two-term mayor declined to comment but didn’t dispute details in the story, saying, “for today we’re just letting the article speak for itself.”
The pair said they began considering a separation two months ago, when de Blasio observed that they were no longer effusive about their love.
“’Why aren’t you lovey-dovey anymore?’” McCray said he asked.
“You can’t fake it,” McCray told The New York Times.
De Blasio agreed that their spark had been lost.
“You can feel when things are off,” he said, “and you don’t want to live that way.”
The pair said they are not yet filing for divorce and will remain in their townhouse in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn.
But they will be open to dating other people, the couple said.
The former mayor admitted he had reservations about his marriage to McCray who had come out as lesbian years earlier.
“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.”
The pair, at least jokingly, appeared eager to pursue their new, semi-autonomous lives.
A deadpan McCray asked the newspaper to print their phone numbers, while de Blasio hoped he’d look best with a picture of himself working out.
“Can I put a picture from the gym in there?” de Blasio asked, adding that he doesn’t believe in using online dating apps.