When Olympic gold medal winner Kurt Angle entered the soap opera-like world of professional wrestling, little did he know that his own personal life would become just as complicated. His marriage and the following divorce not only read like a story line on daytime TV but also became fodder for pro wrestling television.
Kurt Angle and Karen Smedley were married in 1998, the same year Angle debuted for the then-WWF. Karen never appeared on WWF television with Kurt during that time.In 2006, Angle left the promotion and went to work for TNA wrestling.
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According to Angle, he wanted to work a part-time schedule to help heal some nagging injuries. WWE, on the other hand, wanted Angle to seek treatment for an addiction to painkillers, which he wasn’t willing to do. WWE granted Angle a release, and he signed with TNA.
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Jeff Jarrett, co-founder of TNA, married his wife, Jill, in 1992. It was in the late 1990s that Jill was diagnosed with breast cancer. She succumbed to the disease in 2007, a year after Angle’s debut in TNA.
It was also in 2007 that Angle’s problem with prescription drugs and alcohol led to his separation from Karen and eventual divorce in 2008. In the midst of all this, Karen and Jeff began to have a relationship not long after Jarrett’s wife died.
As rumours of Jeff and Karen’s relationship began to spread around the TNA locker room, then-TNA president Dixie Carter confronted Jarrett and asked him about it. Jarrett denied the affair.
The truth was revealed later when a TNA employee anonymously called in to the radio show of Bubba the Love Sponge and spilt the beans. As a result, Dixie suspended Jarrett for lying to her.
Upon Jarret’s return to TNA in 2009, the entire incident was turned into a storyline on TNA programming. Even though Kurt and Karen were already divorced when the story began, the TV storyline consisted of Karen turning on Angle, filing for divorce and marrying Jarrett.
Jeff and Karen eventually announced their real-life engagement in April of 2010 and married that following August. Even after the story on television ran its course, Karen stayed involved with Jeff in the wrestling business. In fact, she works with him to this day as Jarrett runs operations for Global Force Wrestling which recently merged with Impact Wrestling.
Angle, on the other hand, got engaged in 2010 – this time to actress Giovanna Yannotti. The two have three daughters together. Kurt and Karen also had two children together during their marriage.
Throughout his second marriage, Kurt had a number of altercations with the law due to his drug and alcohol issues, which nearly caused him to get divorced a second time. Fortunately, he was able to get treatment and stay sober. Currently, he is a WWE Hall of Fame member and the current on-screen General Manager of WWE’s Raw brand.
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