The Untold Truth Of Anthony Bourdain's First Wife, Nancy Putkoski

When celebrity chef and culinary icon Anthony Bourdain died by suicide in 2018, he left behind a widow, Ottavia Busia-Bourdain, who was the mother of his only child, daughter Ariane Bourdain. However, Bourdain's love life was quite a bit more complicated than these facts suggest. Although Bourdain and Busia-Bourdain were still legally married at the time of Bourdain's death, they had been estranged — and publicly so — for a number of years, leaving Bourdain free to pursue other relationships. This included a two-year entanglement with Italian actress Asia Argento, with whom Bourdain was still involved at the time of his death. Bourdain's relationships with Busia-Bourdain and Argento are the two on which the public has focused most of its attention, but they were not Bourdain's only significant romantic pairings.

Bourdain was previously married to a woman named Nancy Putkoski for nearly two decades, from the mid 1980s until 2005, when the two divorced. The relationship lasted far longer than 20 years, however, having begun in the early 1970s while both Bourdain and Putkoski were still in high school. Nevertheless, little has been said publicly about the woman who was by Bourdain's side as he came of age and catapulted to fame. So, who is Anthony Bourdain's ex-wife, and why is she so mysterious? Here's what we know about Putkoski, Bourdain's first spouse.

Since there's so little public information available about Anthony Bourdain's first wife, Nancy Putkoski, it would be totally understandable if the thought had occurred to you (to paraphrase Mark Twain) that perhaps "rumors of Bourdain's first marriage have been greatly exaggerated." However, that is simply not the case. In Anthony Bourdain's own words, "Nancy and I spent over two decades together, either as a couple or married," as he told Daily Life in 2012. "She was my partner in crime, my wife, and before that my girlfriend."

Bourdain also mentioned in the interview that in high school, he "fell in with your typical bad crowd," but that he "also fell in love with Nancy Putkoski." He recalled that Putkoski was older than him and graduated from high school a year before he would have, had he not finished early. Bourdain, who grew up in Leonia, New Jersey, attended Dwight-Englewood, a private high school located in northern New Jersey. Based on Bourdain's statements to Daily Life, it seems reasonable to assume that Putkoski also attended Dwight-Englewood.

If Nancy Putkoski presumably attended a private New Jersey high school before moving on to Vassar College, an elite institution of higher learning located in upstate New York, then perhaps, like Bourdain, Putkoski was raised in a family of at least comfortable financial means. However, just as Bourdain referred to himself as an "angry and alienated teenager" who was "loved ... but resented the normalcy of [his] household," per his Daily Life interview, it appears that Putkoski may have also rebelled against the suburban status quo.

Bourdain described Nancy Putkoski as a "bad girl" who was older than him and "part of a druggy crowd." Not that he saw this as a bad thing — in fact, he was "smitten," as he confessed, which was at least part of the reason why he elected to graduate early from high school. His next step was to follow Putkoski to Vassar.

Based on Anthony Bourdain's own remarks referencing his relationship with Nancy Putkoski, it appears that the two were high school sweethearts. Whether or not they actually became romantically involved while still in high school is unclear, but when Bourdain followed Putkoski to Vassar College, he became one of a very few men to matriculate there at the time.

Founded in 1861, Vassar was an "elite university for women," as Bourdain told Daily Life in 2012. "They had just started admitting men and so when I arrived at 17, I found myself a rarity. I was an unprepared, immature young man in the company of very many female wolves, who pretty much taught me the way of the world." From this, it would appear Bourdain was implying that Putkoski was not the only woman with whom he was romantically involved during his college years. In fact, despite having followed Putkoski to Vassar, Bourdain left after two years to attend the Culinary Institute of America, just a 15-minute drive from Vassar.

While "there was plenty of love" between the two, as Bourdain noted to Daily Life, they "went through a lot of times, many of them great, many of them bad. It's that simple — or that complicated."

After Anthony Bourdain's bestselling book, "Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly," was published in 2000, he was offered a TV deal, as he explained to The New Yorker in early 2017. Nancy Putkoski, to whom he was married at the time, "identified television early on as an existential threat to the marriage," Bourdain said. "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."

She wasn't exactly wrong, as it turned out — or perhaps her hesitation was a self-fulfilling prophecy. As Bourdain explained to Daily Life in 2012, "I spent almost two years traveling and filming 'A Cook's Tour,' and, as a result, my marriage fell apart." While Bourdain claims the couple tried to reconcile their differences, the chef's ambition and curiosity ultimately drove a wedge between him and Putkoski. "I was ambitious, she was not," Bourdain told The New Yorker. "I have a rampaging curiosity about things, and she was content, I think, to be with me."

The incompatible combination of Putkoski's complacency and Bourdain's intrepid desires eventually brought the marriage to its breaking point, and they officially divorced in 2005. When speaking with The New Yorker 12 years later, he still pointed to that choice as his life's "great betrayal."

Nancy Putkoski's choice to live outside of the public sphere may have contributed to the demise of her and Anthony Bourdain's marriage. Nevertheless, it appears to be a choice from which Putkoski has never flinched, even in the wake of the chef's tragic death. Perhaps most pointedly, Putkoski did not speak on the record to Morgan Neville, the documentary filmmaker behind the 2021 movie "Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain." While the film received positive reviews, some critics wondered why it lacked any first-person commentary from either Putkoski or Asia Argento, with whom Bourdain was involved when he took his own life.

While Neville made it clear in a 2021 Vulture interview that he decided not to interview Argento for his documentary, saying it would have "been painful for a lot of people," he hasn't spoken on the record as to why Putkoski's voice is also absent from the film. What is certain, however, is how Putkoski felt about fame during her time with Bourdain — and for years afterward. "She told me recently that her ideal degree of fame would be that of a Supreme Court Justice," journalist Patrick Radden Keefe wrote for The New Yorker in 2017. "Almost nobody knows what you look like, but you always get the reservation you want."

Anthony Bourdain was candid about ex-wife Nancy Putkoski's distaste for fame and notoriety. Putkoski herself even acknowledged the many challenges that fame introduced to the couple's partnership. In a 2017 email to The New Yorker journalist Patrick Radden Keefe, Putkoski wrote, "We'd been through an awful lot of stuff together, a lot of it not so great, a lot of it wonderful fun. I just didn't anticipate how tricky success would be." However, Bourdain cited another factor in the couple's demise, one that had everything to do with the chef's desire to pursue new experiences around the world.

One that proved uniquely life-changing, according to a 2006 interview with The Guardian, was Bourdain's first trip to Vietnam. The place had an indelible impact on the globe-trotting chef, who lovingly praised the sights, smells, and friendliness of the place, which he described as "a confluence of everything good, a source of perfect happiness." However, the experience of profound cultural enlightenment came at a steep price, according to Bourdain, who stated, "I had seen that ... colour ... and I knew that had changed me, altered the way I would look at things." Ultimately, the chef was left discontented upon returning home, which led to the dissolution of his marriage to Putkoski. Of this, Bourdain said, "She was the love of my life. But everything changed."

If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline​ at​ 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.