Paulina Porizkova’s Ex-Husband: All About Marriage To Ric Ocasek, Her Jeff Greenstein Romance & More
Paulina Porizkova was married to the late musician Ric Ocasek for 28 years before they announced their split. Read about their love and Paulina’s current dating life here.
- Paulina Porizkova is a supermodel who rose to fame in the 1980s
- She and Ric Ocasek were a power couple for decades and share two kids together
- They announced their separation in 2018, but never legally divorced
- Ric, the lead singer of rock group The Cars, died unexpectedly in 2019
- Paulina announced she was in a relationship in May 2023
Paulina Porizkova confirmed to HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY that she was in the “early days” of a relationship in March 2023, and then went Instagram official with TV producer and writer Jeff Greenstein in May 2023. To do so, the 58-year-old model shared a sweet snap of the couple kissing in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, as seen below. They wore matching marinière outfits and looked happy to be together. “Three months of laughter, kisses, banter, love and unalloyed goofiness, celebrated in the goofiest of ways in the most romantic city in the world,” she captioned the photo. How cute!
Paulina’s new love comes about four years after her ex-husband suddenly died. Paulina was previously married to Ric Ocasek, the lead singer of The Cars, but they split in 2018 (although never legally divorced). Over the years, Paulina has opened up about the struggles she faces with missing Ric, loving him, and being wildly upset with him. Now that Paulina has found a new love, let’s take a look at her relationship with Jeff, her past marriage to Ric, and more.
Paulina Porizkova And Ric Ocasek
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Marriage
The Czech-born actress, model, and writer and Ric met on the set of The Cars’ music video for “Drive” in 1984. Paulina was 18 years old at the time and already had eyes for the lead singer. “[It was] love before first sight,” she gushed to Entertainment Weekly. She also described Ric as her perfect man, which happened to be “a combination of Mr. Spock, David Bowie, Jesus Christ, and Chopin.” They fell in love on set and walked down the aisle in St. Barts on Aug. 23, 1989.
The power couple of the ’90s wen on to have their first child together in 1993: a son named Jonathan. Their second son, Oliver, was born in 1998. In addition to his two kids with Paulina, Ric had four sons from previous relationships as well: Christopher, Adam, Eron, and Derek.
Separation
The couple seemed to be made for each other, which is why fans were shocked when they announced their separation after 28 years of marriage. “Our family always has been — and still is — a well-built car. When the four of us are together, we can go wherever the road takes us. But as a bicycle, my husband and I no longer pedal in unison. So we’re ditching the bicycle,” Paulina began in her May 2, 2018 Instagram announcement.
“Ric and I have been peacefully separated for the past year. The photos of our happy family are, in fact, happy family photos; we are just no longer a couple,” she continued, revealing that the separation has been amicable. She concluded, “As I’m sure you can understand, out of respect for our children and each other, we’ll not be commenting further (here or elsewhere) at this time.”
In a 2021 interview, Paulina recalled feeling “invisible” near the end of her marriage. “I started feeling like I was a coffee table, something you put s*** on and bump into in the middle of the night but pay no more attention to other than that,” she admitted on StyleLikeU’s Defying Ageism series. “I sort of went with that for a while until I could no longer take it.”
Death
Ric unexpectedly died at the age of 75 on Sept. 15, 2019. He was found dead in his Manhattan apartment by first responders after they received an emergency call. It was later revealed that he died from cardiovascular disease, per Deadline. Paulina gave more insight into his death one day after the saddening news broke and confirmed that she is the one who called 9-1-1.
“Ric was at home recuperating very well after surgery. Our two sons, Jonathan and Oliver, and I were making sure he was comfortable, ordering food and watching TV together,” the Nightcap actress wrote on Instagram on Sept. 16, 2019. “I found him still asleep when bringing him his Sunday morning coffee. I touched his cheek to rouse him. It was then I realized that during the night he had peacefully passed on.”
“We appreciate the great outpouring of love,” she continued. “We, his family and friends, are completely and utterly devastated by his untimely and unexpected death and would appreciate the privacy to mourn in private.” She also shared flowers left by fans outside his apartment, which can be seen below.
A month later, she shared loving words about Ric, from whom she was snot legally divorced at the time of his death. “Ric and I have been separated for nearly three years now. But we still lived together and still filled the family car.Everyone who knew Ric knew that he could be aloof. And not particularly social. But when he decided to turn his focus on you, it was as if the sun came out,” Paulina gushed alongside a throwback photo of the pair, which can be seen here.
“His smile and his gaze warmed you and made you feel like the most special person in the world. I had that gaze and smile on me for most of my life. For a long long time, no one could make me feels as loved as Ric. He was my sun. With this, I don’t mean my sunshine, no, Ric could be pretty gloomy. In fact, when we first met , he reveled in his nickname ‘the Master of Doom’,” the Sports Illustrated cover star recalled. “But in my universe, it was where he rose and where he set that was the point to which I oriented myself. Like a plant, I tilted my head to catch his rays.”
She added that their separation didn’t change anything about their powerful dynamic. “He was rising and setting and I planned my life around it as one does a day: depending on the position of the sun in the sky: you’ll have breakfast or go to work or dinner with your friends. His death is the end of my world as I knew it,” she concluded.
In an Aug. 2021 selfie, Paulina candidly shared where she was at with her and Ric’s relationship after she made headlines for writing about broken trust and betrayal in an Instagram post that can be viewed here. “I loved my husband for almost my entire life. We had more good years than bad, and that’s saying something in the span of being together for 35 years. I love him still,” she penned, as seen below.
Paulina continued, “His betrayal is just one of many in my life, all of which I’m working on to forgive. Sometimes, I just have a hard time moving forward emotionally when feeling like I’m not worthy of love. And that is a confluence of events in the past, which my husband is only a part of, not the sole perpetrator. I am not blaming him for how I feel today. I’m trying not to blame anyone. Everyone does what they can, and everyone is the hero of their own narrative.”
The “betrayal” she spoke about was likely the fact that she was left out of his will, which she discovered after his death and touched on in a previous interview. “I would love to be able to be sad and miss him. And not also feel this incredible hurt and betrayal,” she admitted on CBS Sunday Morning in Feb. 2020. “It made the grieving process really, really tricky.”
In 2021, however, the Wedding Bell Blues star confirmed she received what she was owed by New York State law. “I am gonna be fine. I am gonna be fine. … I settled last week,” she said on The Los Angeles Magazine podcast, The Originals (via Page Six). “They were very fair. … and we’re done.”
During the interview, Paulina claimed her sons were “disinherited” by Ric in his will as well. “The shock of finding him and the grief of him being dead and then ‘Oh, guess what? You get no money. He didn’t want you to have [any] money, and he disinherited his two oldest sons,'” she recalled. “So, I was really messed up, and I won’t ever have the answers.”
However, she cut her late husband some slack and blamed it on his mental state at the time along with his legal team. “My husband had some lawyers, and he was supposed to go through surgery. … They just cobbled together a really fast, kind of stupid thing,” she hypothesized.
“I don’t think my husband had the brain capacity at the time to figure out what he was really doing,” she noted. “He was a bit of a hypochondriac anyway. … I think he signed a piece of paper without spending a lot of time thinking about it.”
Paulina Porizkova And Jeff Greenstein
Not much is known about Paulina and Jeff’s relationship, as it’s so new. However, it is known that they are exclusive, as Paulina shared a picture of their fingers over their respective phone screens about to delete the exclusive Raya dating app. “This is what commitment looks like these days. … Deleting the dating app on which we met,” she captioned the pic. How cute!
Has Paulina Porizkova Date Anyone Else?
It is known that Paulina dated filmmaker Aaron Sorkin for a few months in 2021. During her interview on The Originals, she called Aaron “one of the greatest and nicest guys” she ever met and then revealed she was with someone before him, but had to keep his identity hidden. “Don’t ask me the details because I cannot divulge them. Was I in love before I met Aaron? Yes,” she confessed.
In Nov. 2022, the mother of two sat down with Jada Pinkett Smith and family on Red Table Talk and said she was actively dating but it wasn’t going so well. “[The dating pool at 57-yeard-old is] a small pool — dirty little puddle,” she explained. “It turns out that on the dating apps, men our age … that are willing to sleep with women our age have slept with all my girlfriends already. There’s like these five guys we keep passing around.” Luckily, shortly after, she fell for Jeff.