Celebrity Exes
Why Did Kendra Wilkinson Divorce Hank Baskett? Revisiting His Cheating Scandal
While Kendra Wilkinson lives a much more private life these days, she was once reality television royalty. After getting her start on The Girls Next Door, she went on to document her relationship with Hank Baskett on Kendra and Kendra on Top.
The exes got married in June 2009 and went on to welcome son Hank Jr. and daughter Alijah together. But a scandal rocked their relationship while Wilkinson was pregnant with Alijah in 2014, and things were never the same. Scroll down for a refresh on what went down between the former couple and find out where they stand now.
Why did Kendra Wilkinson divorce Hank Baskett?
Wilkinson announced her split from Baskett in April 2018. “Today is the last day of my marriage to this beautiful man,” she shared. “I will forever love Hank and be open but for now we have chosen to go our own ways.” She also insisted that there was “no hate” between them and thanked Baskett for “a beautiful 8 years of marriage and 2 beautiful kids.”
The decision to pull the plug on the marriage came four years after Baskett was involved in a cheating scandal with a transgender woman while Wilkinson was eight months pregnant with their second child. Although Wilkinson initially took him back after he owned up to what happened, the couple still eventually decided to go their separate ways.
In 2015, Wilkinson and Baskett appeared on Marriage Boot Camp and he opened up about what happened with Ava Sabrina London. He said they met after he encountered a couple in the grocery store parking lot and asked if he could buy weed from them. The couple gave him a phone number and Baskett agreed to meet up with the person for an exchange. However, he insisted he did not go to the meeting for a hookup.
When he arrived, Baskett said he saw a nude transgender woman making out with another transgender woman. He told People that the woman who answered the door groped him through his basketball shorts. “I didn’t engage in anything,” he told People. “It was like a bank robbery. You never know when you’ll freeze. I don’t know if it was a couple of seconds or 15 seconds, because all I was saying was get out, get out, get out.”
He also denied allegations that he sought the woman out after the encounter and shut down claims that mutual masturbation took place when he came across the women.
Wilkinson admitted to flushing her wedding rings down the toilet when the story about her husband’s alleged affair broke in 2014, but said she doesn’t consider what Baskett did “cheating.” “I can say he was not loyal to me,” she added. “I don’t care about the act. I care about how he reacted to it and how I was told by the media what happened. That scarred me.”
In the end, Wilkinson’s reason for ending the marriage came down to the fact that Baskett “made too many mistakes” in their marriage, she said on Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes‘ podcast in March.
Where do Kendra Wilkinson and Hank Baskett stand now?
Since their divorce was finalized in 2019, Wilkinson and Baskett have remained amicable. They share custody of their children and coparent well.
Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
“I couldn’t have a better coparent,” she told Us Weekly in October 2024. “I couldn’t ask God for a better person in my life.”
She also previously told the outlet in 2023, “I’ll forever love my ex-husband, you know, he’s the greatest father to my kids and that’s all I really just ask for. That itself is so good. It’s good enough and if later down the line things happen, then they happen. I will always love him and I loved him once. Love doesn’t just go away.”
