Friendship tested as Georgie Gardner supports Gayle Marks in marriage breakup

Ex-Today Show host Georgie Gardner is supporting her friend Gayle Marks through her divorce battle with husband Hugh, the embattled boss of Nine Entertainment.

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In the inconvenient war that seems inevitably to follow marriage breakups, Gayle Marks, estranged wife of Nine CEO Hugh Marks, has drawn first blood.

Not only will she walk away from her two-decade long marriage with millions in the bank, she leaves the marriage with Nine newsreader Georgie Gardner firmly in her corner.

Or so say those who have observed the fallout of the Marks’s shock break-up at close range.

Channel Nine boss Hugh Marks and his estranged wife Gayle. Picture: Facebook

Former Today show host Georgie Gardner became a close friend of the couple but has sided with Gayle. Picture: Drew Dennis.

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Since family man Marks’s appointment to the top job at Nine 4 1/2 years ago, much has been made of Marks’s close friendship with Gardner.

In fact for a time after he took the helm at Nine, it seemed one of the Nine executive’s chief selling points internally at the broadcaster.

The pair became close after buying houses in the same street in Artarmon. Their similarly-aged children became playmates and soon enough the two families were spending time together, with Marks and Gardner bonding away from the office and the families enjoying weekends at her south coast holiday house.

Gardner in her time as Today Show host with Karl Stefanovic. Picture: Instagram.

Now we hear staunchly conservative Christian Gardner has extended her support to Gayle Marks rather that Hugh as the couple finalise a quick divorce.

“Gayle is a lovely woman who put everything on hold to raise the couple’s children. She stepped away from her career, her children came first, Hugh’s career second … Georgie was always going to support to Gayle in this sad break-up,” a friend said.

Marks’s affection for Gardner prompted some to wonder if it coloured his judgement when he paired her with Karl Stefanovic as co-host of Today in 2018.

Having clashed with Stefanovic previously during a newsreading stint on Today, Gardner famously had to be persuaded to take the Today chair and a handsome pay rise had to come with the job, the newsreader reportedly demanding and getting around $750,000 a year to sit beside Stefanovic.

Gardner furthermore is understood to have extracted a promise from her CEO friend: If the Today show experiment went pear-shaped, she could return to Nine’s weekend prime time newsreading gig.

When it did after she was partnered with Deb Knight in 2019 following Stefanovic’s dismissal from Today, she got her wish, replacing a disappointed Knight in the weekend newsreading shift.

Originally published as Friendship tested as Georgie Gardner supports Gayle Marks in marriage breakup