MasterChef star Poh Ling Yeow reveals truth behind unconventional relationships with her ex-husbands

The MasterChef star has confessed she still has “huge” arguments with her ex, who went on to marry her best friend.

MasterChef Australia star Poh Ling Yeow has opened up about how she navigates her unorthodox relationship with her ex-husbands.

Yeow appeared on the Share My Mood podcast hosted by The KIIS Network’s Will & Woody, where she shared insight into her failed marriages.

MasterChef Australia judge Poh Ling Yeow has opened up about her two failed marriages. Picture supplied.

The MasterChef Australia judge married her first husband Matt Phipps in 1989 but they separated after nine years together.

She then went on to marry Jono Bennett in 2014 after six years together, but the pair later separated in early 2021.

Yeow explained how her friendship now works with Matt, who has since gone on to tie the knot with her best friend of 20 years, Sarah.

“Losing myself was the first [reason of divorce],” she confessed. “He’s still my ride or die and we still have the hugest (fights) in front of his partner, who’s my best friend. That’s part of the whole awesome, weird story We’re all still really good mates.”

“I think that for the first relationship, that’s when I identified that it was getting really unhealthy because I was getting so lost in the dysfunction that I didn’t recognise myself anymore, and I was just reacting all the time.

“We could just push each other’s buttons and you could have an argument about this and that, it was just insane. That’s when I’m like, I’m getting lost in this bitterness, and I need to find myself again.”

Yeow with her ex-husband and “ride of die” best friend, Matt Phipps. Picture supplied.

Yeow went on to reveal that she shares a similarly close bond with her most recent ex-husband, Bennett.

“Even though we’ve been divorced for like five, six years now, and sometimes I’ll be alone at home and I’ll do something, something goes wrong and I was like, ‘oh my God, if Jono was here, I would totally have blamed him’,” she revealed.

The TV chef said that Bennett’s new partner has been very understanding of their close bond, and knows it’s “nothing weird”.

“So sometimes he’ll just get this bizarre phone call and he’s so lovely because he puts me on speakerphone, so his new partner knows it’s nothing weird,” she continued.

“And I go, ‘hey, Jono, sorry, it’s a bit random … so I just did this thing today. I took the mail out and lost this thing and I just know that if you were here, I would have blamed it on you … Now I get it because I’m alone and I know what I did. But when you were around and you complained about it, I didn’t want to know about it’.”

Earlier this year, Yeow confessed that while she’s open to finding a new partner, she doesn’t know if she’ll ever marry again.

“I think it’s very sensible to maintain a sense of individuality because so much of what is toxic about relationships is that merging, [which is] often what we think is the right thing to do,” she told Stellar. “We’re now in 2024; I feel like we can explore other models.”