Bobbi Althoff on Exactly How She Got Rich—and How Rich, Exactly

Well actually WIRED shares a parent company with Reddit.

Good. Get rid of it.

What’s the part of all of it that feels the weirdest to you still? Is it weird to have something happen in your life and have to issue a statement about it on Instagram?

It’s weird that if I say anything, it’s going to get press. And sometimes I don’t think about that. So when I decided to post an Instagram Story two weeks ago and be like, “I have never slept with someone I interviewed,” I did not expect to wake up to an email from my PR team being like, “Here’s all the news, the press you got from this.” Or when I got a divorce, having paparazzi show up at my house, I was like: “A. How did they figure out where I live? B. Why do they need to take photos of me walking without a wedding ring on?”

It is kind of crazy. Are you in a good place in all of that personal stuff?

A lot of people still really give me a hard time because I’m no longer with my children’s father. I was 22 when I got married.

I didn’t know if we were going to talk about this. But I got married when I was 21.

Did you?

And I got divorced. I was going to offer to tell you about my divorce if it would help you talk about yours. Because I married an abolitionist vegan in college. Special. And I was also vegan and then was seeing a doctor. I was vegan because I was starving myself.

Oh my god.

I went to see a doctor and the doctor was like, “You have to start eating dairy. Katie, you have to start eating some sort of animal product. You have to gain weight.” So I started eating yogurt, and I called my husband, because we were living in different cities at the time, and I said, “There are two things I need to tell you. One is that I started smoking.” And he was like, “That’s hilarious. I never would’ve pictured you as a smoker.” And I said, “And the other thing is that I started eating yogurt.” And he was like, “I’m done.”

No way. Your husband.

My husband. And we got divorced because I ate—

Yogurt.

A Fage 0 percent plain.

It’s so easy to look at the future and be like, you get married and you stay married forever. We had kids immediately. I got pregnant 10 months after knowing him, maybe 11 months. And then at a year marker we’re getting married. We got married in the courthouse.

As a kid, I saw my parents being horrible together. Horrible. Truly, truly, truly. The worst possible couple that could be together.

Are they still married?

No. And I remember the day that my mom told us they were getting divorced was the best day of my life.

I read online that the best time to get a divorce and for it to have the least impact on your kids is before they turn 3. When my daughter was 3 I remember it was just, if we are going to do this, it needs to be now, because our kids won’t know. It wasn’t like my parents, but we weren’t in love.

And by then you must’ve had some financial independence.

The timing lined up perfectly with me getting a lot of money. Once I knew my career was going to take off, I was OK. And we had the conversation and it was a joint conversation of, “this isn’t good anyway.”

Do you want to get married again?

I would love to get married and have all of the things that I never got. I want to meet someone, date them for a while, have them surprise me with an engagement ring, and then get married and have a big wedding and lots of family and friends there. I want to be disgustingly in love one day.

Well, I’m sure all your fans on Reddit will read this interview and take notes.

Oh, they will.

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