Bert Girigorie is a sales and marketing professional best known as the first husband of media personality Wendy Williams. They met around 1992 while both worked in New York radio, married in 1994 and divorced in 1995, a marriage that reportedly lasted only about five months. He has never been a public figure in his own right, and he has given almost no interviews, so nearly everything reliable about him comes from coverage of Williams.
That has not stopped a wave of websites from publishing long biographies with exact birthdays, college degrees, company names and net worth figures. This guide separates what established entertainment reporting supports from what does not. You will find the timeline of the relationship, an explanation of why the marriage is remembered, the context of Williams’s later life, and a clear list of the claims you should not rely on.
Bert Girigorie at a Glance
| Detail | What is known |
|---|---|
| Full name | Bert Girigorie (some profiles say “Bertrand”) |
| Known for | First husband of Wendy Williams |
| Profession | Sales and marketing professional |
| How they met | Around 1992, while both worked at a New York City radio station |
| Marriage | 1994 |
| Divorce | 1995, after roughly five months of marriage |
| Children | None publicly reported |
| Age, education and net worth | Not confirmed by a primary source |
| Current life | Private |
Who Is Bert Girigorie?
Bert Girigorie is an American man who works in sales and marketing. The detail most consistently reported by entertainment outlets is that he worked in radio advertising sales in New York in the early 1990s, which is how his path crossed with a rising on-air personality. A 2024 overview of Williams’s marriages published by Yahoo Entertainment notes that not much is known about him beyond the fact that his own social media page describes him as a sales and marketing professional.
That is about as far as dependable detail goes. He has not written a memoir, hosted a show or built a public brand. The name “Girigorie” is also uncommon, which makes the search results cleaner than for many names but does not make them more accurate.
How Bert Girigorie Met Wendy Williams
According to The List’s relationship history of Williams, the two met in 1992 while both were working at a New York City radio station. Other coverage adds that they dated for roughly two years before deciding to marry. At the time, Williams was developing her radio career, which would eventually bring her national recognition through her long-running radio programme and later her daytime television show.
Details such as where they went on a first date, who proposed or what the wedding looked like have not been made public by either person. Pages that offer them are inventing material.
Timeline of the Relationship
| Year | What was reported |
|---|---|
| 1992 | Girigorie and Williams meet while working in New York radio |
| 1994 | The couple marries |
| 1995 | The marriage ends, after about five months according to Williams’s own documentary |
| 1997 | Williams marries Kevin Hunter, who later becomes her manager |
| 2019 | Girigorie gives a rare interview about the marriage; Williams files for divorce from Hunter |
| 2020 | Williams’s divorce from Hunter is finalised |
One caution about dates: the second marriage is given as 1997 by Fox News and The List, but a few lifestyle sites say 1999. We have followed the 1997 date, which appears in more established reporting.
How Long Did the Marriage Last?
The common summary is “1994 to 1995”. According to Nicki Swift, a 2021 Lifetime documentary about Williams said the couple split after only five months. Because the wedding and the divorce fall in different calendar years, a five-month marriage fits comfortably into that window. The brevity is the main reason the marriage tends to be mentioned in a single line in Williams’s biographies.
What Has Bert Girigorie Said About the Marriage?
He has spoken publicly very rarely. A summary on We Got This Covered says that in a 2019 interview with Radar Online, he described the relationship as becoming strained very soon after the wedding, and that arguments came to a head in 1995 in what he called a big blowout.
It is important to read that carefully. It is one person’s account, given years later, and it describes his experience only. Williams has not publicly disputed it, but she has also said little about the marriage, so the full picture is not available. Anything more specific than saying the relationship ended quickly and on bad terms remains speculative.
Wendy Williams’s Life After the First Marriage
To understand why a five-month marriage still draws searches, it helps to see how much happened to Williams afterwards. She went on to host a long-running New York radio programme and then a nationally syndicated daytime talk show, which began in 2008 and made her one of the best-known talk hosts in the country. Her second husband, Kevin Hunter, became her manager and executive producer, and the couple had a son, Kevin Jr., in 2000. She filed for divorce in April 2019, as reported by Fox News, after reports that Hunter had fathered a child with another woman.
In more recent years, her health became a major public story. In February 2024, her care team announced that she had been diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia and primary progressive aphasia, which was the subject of a Lifetime documentary. We mention this only for context, because Girigorie’s name resurfaces whenever her past is revisited. His link to those later events is nothing more than being a part of her early history.
What Does Bert Girigorie Do Now?
Here the sources become less reliable. Many websites say he lives in Charlotte, North Carolina, and runs a marketing agency there. A number of those pages name the company and give a founding year, but they appear to copy each other, and we could not confirm the details through an official record or a named news source. Because he is a private individual, we do not name a business or a city.
What can fairly be said is that, according to the sources that mention him at all, he has stayed out of the spotlight since the divorce and has not been publicly linked to another well-known relationship.
Claims About Bert Girigorie You Should Treat With Caution
Pages about him tend to repeat the same details. Here are the details we excluded and the reasons for leaving them out:
- An exact birth date and age. A birthday in March 1964 appears on many pages, but none cites a primary source, and some of the sites that repeat it are auto-generated.
- A hometown and family details. Names of siblings and a religious upbringing are given without sources, and they concern private people.
- A college degree. Some pages name a specific university. We found no named, dated source.
- Net worth. Figures ranging from several hundred thousand dollars to a few million appear, and they are admitted estimates.
- Height and weight. These appear on data pages with no basis.
- A current address or business. Private information about a private person.
- Personality descriptions. Phrases like “values privacy over publicity” are conclusions, not evidence.
- Children or a later marriage. No credible report confirms either.
A useful rule: if a page tells you more about a private person than the biography of the famous person he was married to, it deserves doubt.
Why His Name Keeps Being Searched
There are a few reasons. First, Williams’s life has been widely covered, and each new development, from her talk show to her health, sends readers back to her past. Second, the first marriage remains a mystery by celebrity-biography standards: brief, early, and rarely discussed. Third, Girigorie has kept his personal story private, leaving room for online speculation.
The result is a search topic with plenty of text and very little reporting. The most accurate approach is to present the confirmed facts and avoid going beyond them.
How to Read a Celebrity Ex-Spouse Profile
You can apply these habits to almost any article about the former partner of a famous person:
- Check who is quoted and when. A rare interview, such as the 2019 one, is worth more than a hundred paraphrases.
- Compare dates across at least two sources. The 1997 and 1999 discrepancy above is a good example of why.
- Be wary of exact numbers. Net worth and height are rarely sourced.
- Notice filler. Long passages that say nothing concrete are padding.
- Respect privacy. A person who has stayed out of the news owes readers no further details.
Other Profiles in the Same Vein
Girigorie is among many individuals whose public recognition stems from their association with a well-known figure. If you would like to read similar guides, see our profile of Stan Cadwallader, Jim Nabors’s husband, who has also lived mostly out of public view, and our piece on Laura Deibel, Tim Allen’s first wife, which looks at a first marriage that ended long before fame.
Final Thoughts
The confirmed story of Bert Girigorie is short. He met Wendy Williams in New York radio in the early 1990s, married her in 1994 and divorced her in 1995 after a few months, and has lived out of the public eye ever since. Nearly everything else on the web about his age, schooling, company or fortune is unverified. We have described what is known, explained where the gaps are and left the rest out. If credible new information appears, we will update this article.
For more profiles written in the same way, browse the Celebrities section of The Athens Magazine.
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