Ali Landry is grateful that her short-lived, “horrible” marriage to Mario Lopez ended the way it did. Looking back on the brief marriage 18 years later, Landry opened up to Lacey Leone McLaughlin on the Unfolding Leadership podcast about the impact that Lopez’s infidelity had on the rest of her life. The former couple dated for six years before tying the knot in 2004 but annulled their marriage after just two weeks.
“Not even a week after, I found out that it was, like, a Tiger Woods situation,” Landry said. “It was, you know, cheating across the board, with some women for one year, some women for two years.” Looking back on their relationship after it came to a crashing halt, Landry wondered how it came to that point.
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“I thought to myself, ‘How did I, how did I miss this?’ Then I looked at myself and thought, ‘How did I even end up with a person like that? Like, what part of me… what did I do in this situation?’ It couldn’t be all him…” she said. “And moving forward, like, it was devastating. It was truly, like, devastating. And I made a commitment that moving forward, I was gonna take the blinders off, number one. And I was gonna walk through, you know, my life in full awareness and really being aware of my choices, and those choices were gonna represent who I was as a person. And with everything. Not just with the person that I chose but also with my career. And that was the biggest shift in my life.”
Landry began by taking more ownership in her career, pushing back against agents and managers when she needed. “I look back on that situation, which was horrible, and I thank God every single day, because it changed me as a woman. It changed the way… I walk through this world, 100 percent,” she said. “I am so much better because that happened. I am forever grateful for that.”
The Saved by the Bell actor previously admitted to his unfaithfulness in his 2014 memoir, Just Between Us, saying he felt pressured to walk down the aisle by both Landry and society despite not feeling ready to get married. “Once I took responsibility for my feelings, acknowledging how I had so mishandled my decisions, lightning hit me with the truth: I wasn’t in love,” he wrote. “The thoughts came streaming in, but it was too late. My misgivings reared their ugly heads and I knew I should have broken things off with her before I strayed.”
