Christina Haack Tells All About 3rd Divorce from Josh Hall for the First Time (Exclusive)

Christina Haack is moving forward with a little more baggage and a wealth of life lessons she won’t soon forget.

“I don’t look at it as starting over, and especially for the fourth time. That just makes me want to cringe,” the HGTV star, 42, tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story of bouncing back from her third divorce last summer from husband Josh Hall. “It does feel like a fresh start in that for once I’m actually in control of my destiny, and that feels really good.” 

With a support system that includes her first and second husbands, Tarek El Moussa, 44, and Ant Anstead, 46, Tarek’s wife Heather Rae, 38, and a new boyfriend, The Flip Off star is focused on her hit show, her new champagne line Clé Cachée and being present for her three kids: daughter Taylor, 15, and sons Brayden, 10, and Hudson, 6.

“I’m not going to say I have it all together,” she admits. “I’m still learning. I’m still a work in progress. And I’m grateful for my mistakes.” 

As filming kicks off for season 2 of The Flip Off this week, Haack’s life could not look more different than it did during season 1 — a period that was far more challenging, and at times darker, than fans knew.

When in May 2024, HGTV announced the new series on which Haack and her then-husband Hall would face off in a house-flipping showdown against Tarek and Heather, there were already major cracks in their marriage.

“In all honesty, I didn’t want to film the show with Josh,” the designer admits. “We hadn’t been getting along in a long time, and I’m not talking about weeks, like years. The network knew I didn’t want to and I had even told Tarek I didn’t want to. He joked and said, ‘Whatever. You guys are just going to split up in episode two and then the show will go on and everything will be fine.'”

As it turned out, Tarek’s estimate wasn’t far off the mark.

Their breakup was documented in the series premiere, which aired in January 2025: a heart-wrenching episode that surprised and moved fans expecting a breezy renovation show, who instead witnessed a deeply personal confessional between Tarek and Christina in which they forgave each other “100 percent” for their past transgressions eight years after the end of their marriage.

“I’m really good at letting go of the past, and so is Tarek. Through the years we have obviously had talks, and we’ve apologized to each other, but not on camera and not like that,” she says. “Everyone was crying: the camera operators, the production crew. It was emotional.”

For viewers who’ve been watching Haack and Tarek since their HGTV debut in 2013, the evolution of their relationship — from a harrowing 2016 incident in which Tarek fled their family home with a gun to a loving blended family — has been an unexpected transformation.

Perhaps even more so is Haack’s close friendship with Tarek’s second wife, Heather. The women butted heads early on, but after a confrontation at a kids’ soccer game was captured by paparazzi and went viral, they called a truce, Haack says. Filming the show together only sealed their bond.

“We text each other. We go to dinner alone. We go to dinner with the kids. We’re kind of just girlfriends now,” she says. The family also spends holidays and vacations together. They recently returned from a grown-ups-only trip to Las Vegas for Haack’s 42nd birthday. 

The Flip Off also brought about an even more unlikely reconciliation between Haack and her second husband, Anstead. The exes married in December 2018 but split less than two years later. A bitter custody battle over Hudson followed and left them on icy terms for years. After news of Haack’s divorce from Hall reached Anstead, however, he extended an olive branch, and now the pair are peacefully co-parenting along with his girlfriend of four years Renée Zellweger.

“When Josh and I split up, Ant and I immediately had a heart-to-heart and he said, ‘I want to co-parent Hudson like you and Tarek do,’ basically,” she says. “It’s been great. We go to soccer games. We sit next to each other at school. And thank God, because that would make me so sad if growing up, Hudson didn’t get to have those things with us.”

“My relationships with everyone improved [after splitting from Hall], and we have a bigger appreciation for each other,” says Haack of her co-parenting cluster, which also includes her new boyfriend, CEO Chris Larocca, 52, whom she’s been dating for a year, and Tarek and Heather’s toddler son Tristan. “I think my kids love that they know that anyone can come over here. It’s not weird at all. It’s wonderful.” 

One big lesson she’s taken away from the last year is a shift in her perspective about relationship milestones.

“We’re not even discussing getting married. We’re not discussing getting engaged,” she says of Larocca, with a laugh. “We’re taking things slow. I promise. We’re not having children together. We’re not in a rush. We don’t have a timeline. He’s a super busy man. He has his own life, his own friends, his own career, and he’s pragmatic.”

It’s been a major adjustment for the star, from a series of whirlwind romances, to finding a new appreciation for “chill” amid the messiness of life. “I used to be obsessed with the future and what that looked like,” she admits, “but right now there’s a lot of amazing things going on in the present.”