Valerie Bertinelli says Eddie Van Halen was ‘not a soulmate’
By Lisa Respers France, CNN
(CNN) — Valerie Bertinelli is getting real about her relationship with late rocker Eddie Van Halen.
The actress and culinary TV show host reflected on their time together in a video shared on Instagram. She said watching their son, Wolfgang Van Halen, in an episode of “Behind the Music” was “not easy.”
“I’d stopped it many times because it was just too brutal to watch for many reasons. One, seeing Wolfie’s pain,” she said in the video. “Two, seeing what a better job I could have done as a parent even though he turned out magnificently. I made a lot of mistakes.”
Bertinelli had a tumultuous marriage to Van Halen from 1981 to 2007, in part due to his substance abuse problems. They remained close until his death from cancer in 2020.
She said in her video that after his passing, she turned their relationship “into some sort of fantasy, soulmate recreation of history.”
“I was more than willing to put myself in the grieving widow category for a man that I hadn’t lived with for 20 years. What we had together was this beautiful son that we both unconditionally loved,” she said emotionally. “That’s what I got out of that marriage was Wolfie, the best thing that ever happened to me. Not a soulmate.”
Bertinelli was a young star on the hit TV show “One Day At a Time” when she met and fell in love with the guitarist.
She was married to financial planner Tom Vitale from 2011 until 2022 and recently went public about her relationship with writer Mike Goodnough.
Van Halen was married to actress Janie Liszewski from 2009 until his death.
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