It is already established that being married to a famous person is a job on its own. However, there is a hierarchy in fame and few people can boast of being more famous than Michael Jordan, who is regarded as the greatest person to ever play the game of basketball. With that level of fame comes attention to his relationships, which over time has included Juanita Vanoy whom he was married to for 17 years.
Juanita Vanoy had a life of her own before she met Michael Jordan and has maintained one after their divorce. However, the basketballer’s ex-wife’s identity has understandably been overwritten by her relationship with the former so let’s learn more about their relationship in the following paragraph.
What We Know About Juanita Vanoy’s Relationship with Michael Jordan
If you are a believer in fate, you could say everything Juanita Vanoy did led her to meet Michael Jordan. The couple’s first encounter was back in 1984, at a restaurant in Chicago and later at a friend’s bash. The pair began a relationship and dated for three years before taking it further by getting engaged in 1987. Michael proposed to Juanita at Chicago’s Nick Fish and as expected, she consented. However, the couple seemed to have jumped the gun and they broke off the engagement for about a year before they rekindled their love and finally took it all the way to the altar in September 1989.
This relationship bore its first fruit on the 18th of November 1988 when they welcomed their first son, Jeffrey Michael Jordan into the world. The second child, a son named Marcus James Jordan was born two years after in December 1990 before they welcomed their last child, a baby girl named Jasmine Michael Jordan in 1992.
Juanita Vanoy’s relationship with Michael Jordan may not have started on perfect footing but it went very well without major problems for about a decade after the birth of their last child until Juanita filed for divorce in 2002. Just like the staggered beginning to their marriage, the initial attempt at a divorce failed and they stayed together for four more years until December 29, 2006, when the pair announced the official end of their marriage.
While Juanita has remained single since then, Jordan has made a return to the altar with Yvette Prieto. Juanita and Jordan continue to maintain a cordial relationship for their children and the foundation they run together.
To those who might not be familiar with the basketball star, he is a former player of the Chicago Bulls and the Washington Wizards. He is widely regarded as the greatest basketball player of all time having achieved several titles including winning the NBA Championship six times.
What Has The Former Fashion Model Been Up to Since Divorce?
The years that have passed seem to be enough time for both Juanita and Jordan to move on with their lives. Going forward, Juanita has done well for herself despite keeping a pretty low-profile. You would hardly find her on any social media platform neither does she avails herself at any public gathering.
In a 2013 interview, Juanita Vanoy spoke about traveling, collecting art, and doing yoga as among the things she enjoys doing while leading her very private life. She said she also enjoys working with non-profit organizations around Chicago. One popular nonprofit she is part of is the Reel Beauty Inc., a Chicago-based nonprofit that mentors teen girls where she is a board member. She mentioned Hillary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, and Jackie Kennedy as among the women who inspire her actions.
During the interview also, Vanoy mentioned keeping a cordial relationship with Jordan despite being the latter being married to a new wife. However, she did admit that most of their conversation was about their kids. No doubt adapting to life after divorce was quite challenging as the former fashion model gave herself up to learning how to communicate well just to make sure the children are all right.
Speaking further on how she’s faring since her much-publicized divorce, Ms Jordan, who now lives in the exclusive Kingsbury Estates section of River North in Chicago said although she thought of opening her own business, being part of her kids lives remained paramount in her life. So she has kept her real estate license active and focused on helping her children settle into adult life. Well, the children are now grown-ups and are pursuing their personal dreams which on the other hand means more time for Vanoy to focus on her real estate business.
Jeffrey and Marcus both played basketball before retiring to pursue their personal businesses. Marcus also owns an online shoe store “Trophy Room”. As for Jasmine,the youngest child, she shares in her father’s passion for sport and has gone on to pursue graduation in Sports Management from a reputed university in New York. Though keen on creating her own legacy, Jasmine also contributes to her father’s famous sneaker collection, ‘Jasmine Collection’.
What is Juanita Vanoy’s Net Worth?
You don’t get married to the greatest basketball player to ever live without earning some serious dough in an eventual divorce. Michael Jordan has been able to build a wealth worth over a billion dollars and Juanita Vanoy got a share of about $170 million out of it in 2006 when they settled their divorce.
At the time, the settlement set the record for the biggest divorce settlement ever recorded. Along with a huge load of cash, she also got custody of their $168 million valued home.
Outside what she was able to gain as a divorce settlement, we believe Juanita Vanoy garnered some substantial amount from her modeling career. For a long time, Juanita Vanoy lived outside the spotlight of the media and as one would expect, the extent of public information available about her has been limited to her relationship with Jordan.
We do, however, know that she worked as a fashion model for a brief period in her life which is how she eventually met her now ex-husband. The bulk of her early professional life was focused on fashion modeling.
Aside from that, in what has been considered a function of her educational background which still remains publicly unknown, she became the executive secretary of the American Bar Association.
As things got serious between her and Jordan, she spent some time being a housewife. Following the establishment of the Michael and Juanita Jordan Endowment Fund, she worked as the chairperson of the charity organization, a position she continued to hold even after the relationship between her and Jordan deteriorated.
