Celebrity Exes
What Happened to Christina Haack & Tarek El Moussa? The Reason for Their Divorce
So many HGTV couples have been going strong for years, but Tarek El Moussa and Christina Haack aren’t counted among them. The Flip or Flop stars tied the knot in 2009 and welcomed two children together before separating in 2016. Their divorce was finalized in January 2018.
In the years since, Haack and El Moussa have both moved on with other relationships. He tied the knot with Heather Rae El Moussa in 2021, while Haack was married to Ant Anstead and Josh Hall, both of whom she’s since divorced.
Clearly, there’ve been a lot of ups and downs here, so what happened and where do the exes stand today? Scroll down for a refresh.
Why did Christina Haack and Tarek El Moussa split?
Haack and El Moussa announced their split in December 2016. “Like many couples, we have had challenges in our marriage,” they said in a joint statement. “We had an unfortunate misunderstanding about six months ago, and the police were called to our house in an abundance of caution. There was no violence, and no charges were filed.”
The incident in question took place in May 2016, but details of what happened were not publicized until after the split was announced. On May 23, 2016, police were called to Haack and El Moussa’s home due to reports of a “possibly suicidal male with a gun.” A witness reported that Haack was “crying and shaking” as El Moussa fled their home out the back door.
Officials discovered El Moussa on a hiking trail and he cooperated with law enforcement. El Moussa insisted that he was not suicidal and said he was simply “blowing off steam.” He also claimed he only took the gun to protect himself from wild animals, which he reiterated in a 2017 interview on the Today show.
“There’s mountain lions, bobcats and rattlesnakes and big wildlife back there,” El Moussa said. “I went out for a hike to scout some trails, it wasn’t even a big deal. I didn’t understand. It got really blown out of proportion.”
Although the exes said they sought counseling to try and fix things in their relationship after the incident, they ended up deciding to go their separate ways. “During the process, we are committed to our kids and being the best parents we can be,” they concluded. “We will continue to work through this process civilly and cooperatively, and plan to continue our professional life together.”
El Moussa filed for divorce in January 2017, and it was finalized one year later. Despite the split, they continued to work together on Flip or Flop until it concluded with its 10th season in 2022.
In a 2017 interview with People, Haack said the split was also due to how much the HGTV stars went through “in a short amount of time.” Amid the beginning success of Flip or Flop, El Moussa was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. While he was undergoing treatment, Haack suffered a miscarriage following a struggle to get pregnant. When she finally did give birth to her and El Moussa’s second child, their business was booming, and she went back to work after just four weeks.
“I was overwhelmed. The tension between me and Tarek was high,” Haack admitted. “We weren’t able to properly communicate anymore.”
Do Christina Haack and Tarek El Moussa get along now?
Yes, Haack and El Moussa have a very amicable relationship now. They coparent their children and spend time together with no issues. Most recently, they got together to celebrate their daughter’s middle school graduation.
The former couple posed in a photo with both of their kids, as well as El Moussa’s wife, Heather Rae El Moussa, who Haack has developed a close friendship with, too.
However, things weren’t always like this. “In the beginning, we were still filming Flip or Flop. We didn’t say a word to each other unless it was on camera,” El Moussa recalled in an interview with Page Six. “And then the last few years we’ve just really communicated over coparenting and things like that.”
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He added, “We’ve now rebuilt the relationship that we once had in a much different way. So we’re more aligned, we’re more supportive, and we still always have the same goal, which is raising the best kids possible.”
Something that pushed the friendship in the right direction was The Flip Off, which the exes filmed in 2024. The show was a house-flipping competition between the El Moussas and Haack, who was initially partnered up with then-husband Josh Hall. However, they separated during filming, and El Moussa was very supportive of his ex-wife in the aftermath.
