Charissa Thompson has no plans to walk down the aisle, but she might throw a party. Thompson has never been shy about where she stands on marriage, and she made that clear again. The FOX Sports host says she has softened her stance on marrying boyfriend Steve Cundari, and the celebration she has in mind comes with a name that sounds more like a send-off than a wedding.
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“Y’all know where I stand on this,” Charissa Thompson said on Calm Down With Erin and Charissa. “I don’t think you need to get married to have a relationship that is deemed serious, but I also understand why some people want to, whether you have children and you want your kids to have the same name or whatever. I’ve gone on the record multiple times about this.”
On the podcast, she did admit her position has loosened a little, though: “I also have softened my tune that I would do a party or something to celebrate, not a celebration of life, but maybe that’s what I’ll call it. Actually, maybe that’s what we’ll call it. It’ll be like a faux funeral for Steve and me.”
The FOX Sports host is dating marketing executive Steven Cundari, and there’s a sweet story behind how they met. Her friends Matthew Stafford and his wife Kelly set them up. On her podcast, Thompson explained that the couple had seen enough of her dating the wrong guys. “Matthew and Kelly were sick of me dating losers, and they were like, ‘We have a great guy for you.’
“So they were the matchmakers.”
Thompson went to Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding with Cundari this year, and it seems to have stirred something. Reports say it left her wanting a “version adjacent to marriage,” basically a commitment ceremony without the legal paperwork.
What bothers her more than the marriage question itself is how many people feel free to weigh in on someone else’s choices.
“Like anything in life, do what works for you and your partner and do that,” she said on the podcast. “Who cares what other people [think]? It’s not other people’s lives. This is the beautiful part about being the author of your own story. You get to write whatever the hell you want.”
Her past helps explain why marriage isn’t high on her list. She has already done it twice. Her first marriage came at 25, and she has never publicly named the person she married.
It was the “best and worst decision” she’d made, according to Sports Illustrated.
Her second marriage was to sports agent Kyle Thousand. They were together for two years, and she filed for divorce in April 2022, citing “irreconcilable differences.”
Since then, she has said she’s done with legal weddings.
“No, I will never legally get married again. I won’t sign any paperwork. But happy to have a party and celebrate how much I love Steve with friends and family,” Thompson wrote in an Instagram Q&A.
She has also said on her podcast that she wasn’t interested in marrying Cundari. For her, “being with a man who is kind and doesn’t take from [her] is commitment enough.”
All of this came up around a lighter moment on air. After the Bears beat the Patriots 30-24 at Soldier Field, Thompson led the postgame coverage like she always does. While the panel went through the game, she tossed in a joke about her exes that got a few laughs.
“I thought you were going to make me rank my good, better, best ex-husbands, and they’re all bad,” Thompson said to her co-hosts.
It seems Thompson can laugh about her marriage history while still keeping a firm line on the paperwork.