Padma Lakshmi gave a candid interview this morning on "Today" in anticipation of her new memoir "Love, Loss, and What We Ate." The 45-year-old model and host opened up about her relationship with ex-husband Salman Rushdie and how she was not sure who the father of her daughter was when she was born.
Most people know Lakshmi as the host of Bravo's "Top Chef," but before she was ever on the cooking show, she was a model who met Indian novelist Rushdie and feel in love. The couple spent eight years together, marrying in 2004. However, they divorced three years later. Despite the short nuptials, Lakshmi maintained the fact that she had "a wonderful relationship" with Rushdie.
"Like any marriage, it had its ups and downs," she explained," and I think, also, we were dealing with another issue that we didn't know about at the time: endometriosis."
Lakshmi has suffered with endometriosis her whole life, which wasn't diagnosed until later in her life. It is a very painful condition in which the tissue that is supposed to line the wall of the uterus grows outside of it.
"At the time, I really needed to take care of my health, and I couldn't take care of my health and get well and also take care of my marriage," she admitted to "Today" host Matt Lauer. "I did the best I could."
After Lakshmi and Rushdie divorced, the TV host dated around for a while before she got into a relationship with two different men, the late billionaire Teddy Forstmann and venture capitalist Adam Dell. When she became pregnant in 2009, she admitted that she did not know which of the two men the father was. After a paternity test, it was revealed that Dell was indeed the father to Lakshmi's daughter, Krishna Thea Lakshmi-Dell.
"It probably wasn't the best choice, but it was the choice that I made at the time," she told Lauer. "I didn't want to be in a serious relationship. I was still really hurting from my divorce. I probably shouldn't have been with anybody and just taken the time I needed for myself. But I was presented with two very different, very interesting men. Men do it all the time. I chose to do it, and I was open with the men involved. I'm going to own my history."
