The marriage of Ted Turner and Jane Fonda: Why the one-time power couple’s relationship ended

ATLANTA — Ted Turner and Jane Fonda were the biggest power couple in Atlanta and even Hollywood – until they weren’t.

They were the talk of the town when they began dating in 1990, shortly after Fonda split from her second husband, Tom Hayden.

“I was a regular fishing companion with Ted, and he and I were both fishing for bass, and he had told me that he had just heard that Jane Fonda was going to get a divorce from her husband. And he was thinking about asking her for a date,” friend and former President Jimmy Carter told CNN in a previous interview.

In the CNN documentary about Turner’s life, the two talked about the phone call that started it all.

“I pick up the phone, this booming voice -- ‘Is it true?’ And I said, ‘Is what true?’ You and Hayden are you divorcing?’ Yes. ‘Do you want to go out?’” Fonda said.

“She said ‘I’m devastated and I don’t want to talk about going out,’” Turner said at the time.

“I said I’m actually in the middle of a nervous breakdown. Call me in six months. I thought, this guy is crazy, this is not what I want to hear right now,” Fonda said.

“And I called her six months to the day. She agreed to have dinner with me. It was love at first sight,” Turner said.

They ended up going dinner at Turner’s ranch in Montana.

“I had gone to Montana, not having any idea what to expect. I didn’t know whether is the man going to pick me up in the limousine? Does he have one of those? You know?” Fonda said. “Well, it was this little old Jeep, and we stayed in the ranch manager’s very, very modest cabin.”

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She said it was one little thing that ended up making her fall for Ted.

“As we were driving around and getting lost, he looked up and way in the distance was a silhouette of a bird flying. I don’t remember what kind it was, but he knew it. He knew exactly what the bird was by the way it flew, and he knew its nesting patterns. And I thought I could fall in love with this man,” Fonda said.

And that she did. In 1991, the couple walked down the aisle at Turner’s Avalon Plantation, outside of Monticello, Florida.

But soon, Fonda would learn heartbreak. A month after they were married, Fonda found out that Turner cheated on her.

The two stayed together for several more years but eventually their differences drove them apart. One those included Fonda’s decision to become a Christian.

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“It wasn’t because she had become Christian,” Turner wrote in his memoir, “Call me Ted.” He said it was more about the fact Fonda didn’t talk to him about it.

Although the two deeply cared for each other, Turner talked about how the two had trouble communicating even when they were together.

“Our closets faced each other’s, and when I saw her empty space, I sat down on the floor between them and cried,” Turner wrote.

“Ted and I were running into marital problems and I thought I’m gonna leave him. I was terrified,” Fonda said. “I was 62 years old and I hadn’t worked in like 15 years and I had no career and I had one angel on this shoulder saying to me, ‘Come on, Fonda. He’s cute, he’s rich, he can take care of you, he’s fun.’”

“And on the other shoulder, in a very tiny little voice was one angel saying, ‘You’ll regret it if you stay at the end. You’re never gonna become who you can be. You’ll regret it,’ Fonda said. “And scared as I was, I left and it was hard.”

In 2001, the two officially divorced. He recalled going back to his ranch after it was official.

Despite their marriage ending, the two would remain friends from then on.

“We had a great time for 10 years. I am, I just am so happy that I got to spend 10 years with him,” Fonda said about their marriage.

“When you love somebody and you really love them, you never stop loving them, no matter how hard you try, you can’t,” Turner said in an interview with Piers Morgan.

Fonda released a statement on Turner’s passing on her Instagram account on Wednesday, saying:

“MY IMMEDIATE THOUGHTS ABOUT TED: He swept into my life, a gloriously handsome, deeply romantic, swashbuckling pirate and I’ve never been the same. He needed me.

“No one had ever let me know they needed me, and this wasn’t your average human being that needed me, this was the creator of CNN, and Turner Classic Movies, who had won the America’s Cup as the world’s greatest sailor.

“He had a big life, a brilliant mind and a soaring sense of humor.He could also take care of me. That was new as well. To be needed and cared for simultaneously is transformative. Ted Turner helped me believe in myself.

“He gave me confidence. I think I did the same for him, but that’s what women are raised to do. Men like Ted aren’t supposed to express need and vulnerability. That was Ted’s greatest strength, I believe.

“He also taught me more than any other person or school classes, mostly about nature and wildlife, hunting and fishing (hunters and fishermen who follow the law are the best environmentalists), but also about business and strategy. Ted was supremely strategic. It was likely innate, but he studied the Classics in college, knew about the Peleponesian War inside and out and the strategies used by Alexander the Great and even Genghis Khan. And sailing big boats as he did further honed those strategic talents which he then brought into his businesses to much success. He could see around corners for sure.

“Next to Katharine Hepburn, Ted was the most competitive person I have ever met and that was fascinating to witness. Whether it was who’d made the most ski runs at the end of the day, to acres of land owned (stewarded is the more fitting word for his relationship to land), who had the most billions, how many countries he’d made love to his prior lover in and could I match that, it was challenging. Ted was challenging, but I’ve always been up for a challenge, and with Ted it was almost always worth it.”

Neither Fonda nor Turner remarried since their 2001 divorce.

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