The Juicy Details Of Anthony Bourdain's Love Life

He met his first love, Nancy Putkoski, in high school. And this is when the chef's bad-ass reputation formed. According to The New Yorker, Putkoski was "an older girl [...] who ran with a druggie crowd." Bourdain started running with them, too. After he graduated, he followed her to Vassar for college, but dropped out after two years and headed to culinary school.

Bourdain and Putkoski sealed the deal in 1985. Throughout the 80s, Bourdain still turned to drugs regularly. In his book Kitchen Confidential, he wrote, "We were high all the time, sneaking off to the walk-in at every opportunity to 'conceptualize'."

A profile of Bourdain in The New Yorker mentioned that he and Putkoski would save up enough money to go to the Caribbean every few years. But besides that, the two didn't do much traveling.

Putkoski saw her husband's blossoming TV career as a threat to their marriage. "I felt like the whole world was opening up to me. I'd seen things. I'd smelled things. I desperately wanted more. And she saw the whole thing as a cancer," he said in an interview. The two divorced after 20 years of marriage.

Chef Eric Ripert met Busia when she worked as a general manager at Geisha, a restaurant in New York City. He thought she'd be a good match for Bourdain and set the two up. The couple hit it off, despite their 22-year age difference.

The pair's first date was at a cigar bar. Another early meet-up was at a seafood joint. "She ordered a 6-pound lobster. I sat there, enraptured, watching her suck every bit of meat from it," he spilled to Cosmo. Soon after that, they got matching tattoos — chef's knives.

The couple welcomed a daughter, Ariane, on April 9, 2007. Just weeks later, on April 20, they exchanged vows.

Bourdain traveled constantly, and Busia admitted to the Miami New Times that her biggest challenge was "my husband's insane schedule." She didn't want anything to do with TV, plus they had a young child, so most of Bourdain's adventures were solo ones.

In a piece Busia wrote for Lena Dunham's newsletter, she claimed Bourdain liked to joke that he married Sophia Loren but ended up with Jean-Claude Van Damme. She even kind of agreed. Busia took up MMA fighting after the birth of their daughter, and though Bourdain occasionally joined her, he didn't practice as competitively. Their interests diverged, and the pair split amicably in 2016.

"I’m in no rush to even think about that honestly," he told People right after his divorce from Busia.

Italian actress and director Asia Argento worked with Bourdain on an episode of Parts Unknown in Rome, and Page Six linked the two romantically by February 2017. They were spotted kissing on the street and walking hand-in-hand.

She's busy, too, he says, commenting to People that the 42-year-old mom of two and he are "circus freaks."

They go on constant adventures — often for episodes of Parts Unknown — and Argento often posts sweet photos of Bourdain to her Instagram.