My sudden relationship with the gorgeous blonde who stole my husband of 30 years… and his merciless tactic that introduced us collectively

Sitting in a coffee shop in Cottonwood, Arizona, my anxiety was growing by the minute. I kept glancing at the door nervously, trying hard not to spill my drink because my hands were shaking so much.

I was waiting for a woman, that woman. The beautiful blonde, ten years my junior and my former friend… whom my husband fell in love with.

I hadn’t rehearsed what I was going to say to her.

What do you actually say to the person who was the impetus for the end of my 30 year marriage and the person who’d also been my most trusted confidante?

And then she finally arrived. My mouth felt dry with the tension. We exchanged some polite small talk, asking how each other was. But, after a few minutes of these ridiculous niceties, I couldn’t contain my emotions any longer.

‘For goodness’ sake Korey, what on earth were you thinking?’ I yelled. ‘You told me you would never do that to another sister, but you did.’ 

‘I didn’t mean to do it. But I believed all the lies he told me about your marriage,’ she replied, the tears flowing already.

Perhaps, she didn’t mean to. But the life I had known for three decades had come to an end. 

I had been the first to meet the man we both ended up loving, the man who would go on to wound us so deeply.

It was the summer of 1988 in a Phoenix, Arizona nightclub when I first saw Arnold.

There he was up on stage – a handsome man with a shock of brown hair, who radiated charisma.

I was 36 and working as a legal secretary; he was two years older than me.

He was playing the violin. I come from a musical family and my favorite uncle was a violinist. I fell in love straight away.

I spotted him standing near the bar during his break, walked up to him and asked him to dance. I guess I was a little cocky because I had won a few dance contests.

Even though there was an obvious attraction between us, he told me he was spoken for.

To be honest, I was also dating someone, but I was still a bit disappointed that we didn’t connect.

I didn’t see him again until the following January. His band came to a club near where I lived. Again I walked right up to him and said: ‘You owe me another dance.’ 

He took my hand. It felt like magic.

Things moved quickly.

Arnold turned out to be a die-hard romantic. He proposed to me out of the blue on St Patrick’s Day 1989. We’d been swimming in a creek in Payson, Arizona, and were sitting on some rocks drying off. He sang me a song. The final lyrics were: ‘Will you be my wife?’

At first, it didn’t register, and I didn’t reply. I’d been married before, but it ended in divorce after six years. I wasn’t looking for another long-term commitment.

‘Well, will you?’ he repeated. Without really thinking about it, I said, ‘OK.’

We married that June in an intimate outdoor wedding at a Spanish-style creek-side retreat near Sedona, close to where I’d been born and raised. We invited a few members of the family including Arnold’s parents, my family, and a few friends.

It was a dream – and short lived.

A few days later, on our way home from Sedona, he let me know he was angry with me over my wedding outfit. It wasn’t a traditional gown, but a beautiful white skirt and matching lace jacket. I thought I looked a million dollars.

Arnold had worn an ivory tuxedo to the ceremony and had assumed I’d wear something cream-colored to match. In truth, we did look a bit ridiculous in the photographs. But I was stung and taken aback.

‘I told you I was going to wear white,’ I replied. ‘Yes, but I didn’t think you meant white, white,’ he said.

It was the first of many red flags that I ignored.

Two years later, we moved to Nashville. I continued my legal career with a Nashville law firm and took part time jobs as a bartender.

Arnold wrote beautiful music inspired by his Native American heritage. It was that music that set us on the road to touring full time. We sold our home and bought a motorhome travelling across the United States. 

The next few years we focused on building his career. But in 2008 when the economy tanked, I began playing on stage with him. I played the keyboard, mostly string augmentations in the Native American songs, and a hand drum called the ‘bodhran’ to add cultural rhythms to the Celtic songs.

Our happiest times were playing together on stage. In between songs, Arnold would tell the audience how ‘wonderful’ I was. ‘My lovely wife is my rock. I couldn’t do what I do without her,’ he’d say.   

We ended up doing around 160 shows per year driving through various Mid-Western states. Touring and selling CDs was a tough gig but we had a loyal following. For several years, we earned more than $250,000 – a huge amount at that time in the industry.

Things began to fall apart in 2011. 

For all his on-stage talk about me being a great wife, Arnold was a different person behind the scenes. He’d criticize me for not doing enough to make him successful. In addition to feeding him, sorting the bookings and driving the motorhome to each gig, I did all the videos and social media posts, managing his YouTube channel. But I knew I would never be enough for him and I quit trying.

Our marriage continued downhill, gathering pace. At times, he was cruel.

One day he told me: ‘I’m so glad to finally figure out why I’m not attracted to you.’ He’d just got off the phone with a woman I suspected was a girlfriend from before we were married. Maybe he was comparing me to her. Whatever their conversation, I felt the betrayal of him discussing our private life with her.

That was the day love died. 

Not long afterwards, he spent two weeks touring Ireland and England with a country music star, while I stayed behind in Nashville to work. He showed me some pictures when he got back. In one, he had his arm around a girl.

I asked who she was. ‘Oh, she’s the keyboard player in one of the other bands we were touring with. Just so you know, we made out in the back of a taxi on the way to her hotel,’ he said.

Looking back, I wonder if he thought my lack of reaction to that comment gave him a free pass.

When he was playing in Branson, Missouri with the same country music star, he rang me from a woman’s hotel room to say she was going to give him a massage. I asked if she was a licensed massage therapist. He replied that she wasn’t and that she was going to massage him on the bed.

Why did I put up with it? It was easier to stay than leave and I didn’t want to go through another divorce and feel like a failure. But I should have left.

Instead we stayed together for several more years. As well as the music, we’d always been interested in spiritual matters. So in 2017, we moved to Cottonwood, where we converted a Unity Church into a spiritual center.

It was a place where people of different faiths were welcome. Arnold was the lead minister, and I was his second.

I don’t actually remember meeting Korey for the first time, but that first year, she became one of our congregants. She was tall and blond and, at 54, a decade younger than me.

I liked Korey. We became firm friends. She played the piano and before long, she, Arnold and I became a trio, performing on Sundays at the center.

A year went by.   

I noticed little things that raised my suspicions. She would come off the stage before I did and Arnold would always reach out his hand to help her. He never did that for me.  

One day, Korey told me she thought Arnold was ‘the perfect divine male’. I laughed, because I knew his true character and I simply said, ‘You just don’t know him.’ To be honest, by that time I even hated having sex with him.

I told Korey all of this, but, in the summer of 2019, she went behind my back anyway.

Before long Arnold would leave the house saying: ‘I’ve got to go, I’ve got to see Korey.’ It was Korey this, Korey that. I knew something was starting up then.

Things came to a head the night after Thanksgiving in 2019. Arnold told me he didn’t love me anymore; he was in love with Korey and he was filing for divorce. 

He fantasized that they would run off into the sunset and play music together, just as we had done 30 years earlier. 

We finalized the divorce in the Spring of 2020. With that, Arnold lost in a vote of confidence by the congregation and I took over the spiritual center. 

To her credit, Korey didn’t let Arnold move in with her until the divorce came through, and only then to a room in her basement. But their relationship lasted just a few months.

In April 2021, Korey and I happened to both be at a birthday party for one of the spiritual center’s congregants. Perhaps I wouldn’t have gone if I’d known she’d be there. But Korey took me aside and looked me straight in the eye.

‘I made a big mistake,’ she said. ‘Now I know what you went through.’

She’d kicked him out and I felt desperately sorry that he’d behaved that way towards Korey, but all I could say to her was: ‘Thank you. If not for you, he might never have left!’

Eight months passed. Things settled down at the spiritual center and I slowly came to terms with all that had happened. I didn’t want to apportion blame. It eats you up inside and holds you in the past. 

Going through that process, I was inspired to write a book about forgiveness following divorce. I wondered if I could repair my friendship with Korey.

That’s how I came to be sitting in a Cottonwood coffee shop waiting for my ex-husband’s mistress.

We talked and talked for two and a half hours, mostly about Arnold.

She vented and cried a lot. She said he’d been horrible to her in the end. ‘You’re not supporting me or my music,’ he would tell her. That was a line he’d used with me, too.

There was a strange bond between us. I understood her.

When we parted, I hugged Korey.

‘I forgive you,’ I said. ‘You did me a favor.’ The affair had given me the excuse I needed to no longer struggle in an unhappy marriage.

Korey and I have kept in touch and have restored our friendship. I think she saw me as a shoulder to cry on because only I knew what Arnold was capable of. I’d been through the same thing with his cruelty and gaslighting. It was cathartic to discuss what we had both experienced.

Four-and-a-half years on, I’ve thanked Korey a hundred times for her part in ending my toxic marriage.

We talk every week, but we’ve moved on from talking about Arnold.

We’re both over him – and now we will always have a solid friendship without him.

As told to Jane Ridley, Real-life Correspondent for DailyMail.com. If you have a story you’d like to share, please email jane.ridley@mailonline.com. Some names have been changed to protect identities.