Jill Martin is a welcome presence on the Today Show for her “Steals and Deals” and stylist role on “Ambush Makeovers”. In May 2020, Martin revealed that she and fiancé Erik Brooks decided to split, almost one year to the date of getting engaged. Now, the Today contributor is announcing their reengagement and reveals how she made the first move toward reuniting.
Jill Martin made an important call
Martin and Brooks were initially engaged over Memorial Day weekend in 2019. In May 2020, the Today star revealed that the two had decided to go their separate ways and noted that their living in two separate states played a role in the decision to split. Now, Martin is sharing how she decided to reconnect with her ex.
“I decided to call,” Martin wrote on Today.com. “It had been 18 months since I had given the ring back. It had been 18 months since we had spoken. During those months, I was never even tempted to reach out — the thought was just too painful.”
The “Deals and Steals” guru made the bold choice to pick up the phone to speak with her former fiancé even though she had no idea how he would respond.
“But then one day, I built up the courage — chutzpah, as my Grammy would say — and I called at 2 p.m. on a Thursday,” Martin remembered. “He picked up.”
‘We both still needed to grow’, ‘Today’ star said
In her Today essay, Martin noted that she fully intended to spend her life with Brooks and assumed they could walk through any problems.
“Even though we were fighting and hurting each other to what I thought was an irreparable place, I never thought our relationship would break,” she explained. “But it did. There are moments of impact in life where you can remember what you were wearing, what the weather was like, what was around you. The conversation we had when we decided we needed to move on from each other was one of my moments.”
The two had met on a dating app in 2017 and had an enviable romance, but Martin admitted that their relationship had taken a tumultuous turn.
“After almost three years of a near fairy tale, the lows became more overwhelming than the highs,” she wrote. “It wasn’t working. We were arguing more than we were getting along. Energetically, the timing wasn’t right. We both still needed to grow. It took falling apart to build ourselves back together.”
Jill Martin rewrote her fairy tale
During their 18-month separation, Martin sought therapy and spent time journaling and working on herself. When she reached out to Brooks for the first time after their split, they were both more evolved.
“When I called Erik on that random Thursday a few months ago, he was shocked to hear from me,” Martin recalled. “He took time to process that first conversation and then we began to learn about each other again. We wanted to make sure this time would be different. Better.”
While their first engagement was very lavish with a setting of flowers and friends and family present, the couple’s reengagement was more intimate. Brooks popped the question – again – while the two were vacationing alone in the Bahamas. Though Martin hasn’t given a wedding date, she noted that they are both focusing on their happiness together and not allowing misunderstandings to take them off course.
“Everyone’s journey is different,” she wrote. “It took me 45 years to find my fairy tale. When I realized I was confident on my own, that’s when I knew Erik and I were ready to get back together. The realistic version of my fairy tale was ready to be written.”
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