Highlights
- Court records show Alan Ritchson filed for divorce from wife Catherine on December 1, 2025, per TMZ reporting.
- The couple reportedly reconciled by March 2026 before confirming their split publicly on September 12.
- Alan and Catherine share three sons and asked for “privacy and compassion” in their joint statement.
Alan Ritchson filed for divorce from his wife of 20 years back in December 2025, nine months before either of them said a word about it publicly.
Court documents reviewed by TMZ show the Reacher star filed on December 1. The outlet reports the couple reconciled that March, then spent the following months arriving at the decision to separate for good.
That final call became public on September 12, when Alan and Catherine Ritchson posted a joint statement to Instagram. After two decades together, they wrote, they had “decided to end our marriage and continue alongside one another in a different way.”
The rest of the statement, in their own words, centered on their three sons, Calem, 13, Edan, 12, and Amory, 10. The couple described them as the focus going forward, alongside a commitment to co-parenting, room for each of them to grow individually, and a request for privacy as they adjust.
Neither Alan nor Catherine has said publicly what prompted the December filing or what ultimately led them to make the split permanent this month.
The relationship goes back to when they were teenagers. Catherine has said she noticed Alan the moment she saw him in a Florida ballet studio, recalling on her podcast that she turned to a friend and asked, “I turned to my friend Miriam and I said, ‘Who is that?'”
Alan has told a version of the same story. He worked up the nerve to approach her after some encouragement, he later told Men’s Health, and once he did, “she was like the sweetest thing in the world.”
He’s been candid elsewhere about how the marriage looked from his side. On The Late Show, he told Stephen Colbert, “I don’t know why she sticks around, dude. She deserves better.”
Even recently, the marriage looked steady from the outside. Marking their 19th wedding anniversary in May 2025, seven months before the initial filing, Alan called Catherine “wisdom personified” and described building their life together as the greatest privilege of his own.
He did not post a similar tribute for their 20th anniversary this past May, according to reporting on the couple’s timeline, a quiet break from a pattern he’d kept for nearly two decades.
The three boys remain the constant in every version of this story, from the ballet studio to the courthouse to Saturday’s statement. Whatever changed in between, Alan and Catherine have said the one thing they intend to protect is that.
