Gisele Bündchen was the world’s highest-paid model, earning more than one of football’s biggest stars. Yet in her marriage to Tom Brady, she was also scaling back her own work and taking the lead at home so he could keep playing.
Forbes estimated her earnings at $42 million from June 2012 through June 2013, compared with Brady’s $38.3 million. For June 2013 through June 2014, the gap widened to $15.7 million: her $47 million against his $31.3 million. She earned an estimated $44 million from June 2014 through June 2015.
Those estimates put her among the breadwomen, Mélanie Berliet’s term for women who are their household’s main or sole earner.
Her income came from modeling, business interests and brand deals. Those interests included an equity stake in Brazilian footwear company Grendene, her Sejaa eco-cosmetics business and her Gisele Bündchen Intimates lingerie line. She also had multiyear contracts with Pantene and Oral-B, alongside deals with Chanel and H&M.
Bündchen had challenged Forbes’s estimates before. In GQ’s June 2008 issue, she said, “I would like him to talk to my accountant and figure out where is the cash that’s missing. Because I haven’t seen it.”
Brady later acknowledged the financial flexibility her income gave him. In May 2019, his contract averaged $15 million a year, 18th among quarterbacks, a contract figure rather than total earnings. Asked about his pay on Jimmy Kimmel Live, he said, “Winning has been a priority,” adding, “And my wife makes a lot of money.” He joked, “I’m a little smarter than you think.”
They had met on a blind date in December 2006 and married on February 26, 2009, in Santa Monica. Their daughter Vivian was born in 2012, so Bündchen’s $40 million-plus years overlapped with raising her and their son Benjamin.
She retired from runway modeling in April 2015 in São Paulo, with Brady in the front row. In October 2021, he acknowledged on his Let’s Go! podcast that she “hasn’t worked as much in the last 10, 12 years” while raising their family.
In May 2022, Bündchen described their arrangement to British Vogue: “His focus is on his career, mine is mostly on the kids.” She had also set up their children’s homeschool. Brady had told Howard Stern in April 2020 that she’d reminded him, “I have goals and dreams too.”
In an Elle interview published September 13, 2022, she spoke about making room for those ambitions: “And now it’s going to be my turn. It’s not like I’m going to be in the valley forever.”
Their divorce was finalized on October 28, 2022, after 13 years of marriage. Their settlement agreement was not filed in court, and their parenting plan was confidential.