Cassandra Thorburn, ex-wife of Karl Stefanovic, makes surprising new career move

After a very public marriage breakdown with morning show host Karl Stefanovic, Cassandra Thorburn has made a surprising new career move.

Cassandra Thorburn has taken on a new career path, following a difficult few years in the wake of her marriage breakdown and very public split from morning show host Karl Stefanovic.

After a tough few years following the split, Thorburn has taken up a job as a dental receptionist and assistant on Sydney’s north shore, The Daily Telegraph reports.

Thorburn left her career as a journalist/producer to raise the Stefanovics’ three kids.

During Covid, she worked as a carer to the elderly at Daughterly Care and then as a communications officer at a children’s shelter.

Cassandra Thorburn has began a new job. Picture: Adam Yip

A family friend told The Daily Telegraph that after the first lockdown in 2020, Thorburn “realised there were a lot of isolated older people nearby, including her two neighbours, women in their eighties”.

She decided to change jobs to be closer to home when the couple’s daughter Willow sat for her HSC in 2022. Next year, their youngest son River is set to sit his HSC.

Stefanovic met his second wife Jasmine Yarbrough in 2017, after splitting from Thorburn the year before.

Thorburn opened up about her spit from the Today show host in a 2017 interview with Woman’s Day magazine, talking about the “dark days” she experienced in the wake of their divorce.

Karl and Jasmine Stefanovic.

She told the publication that she had grieved the end of her relationship and that Stefanovic was now “dead” to her.

“I realised I was going through stages of grief, and to me it was like someone had died,” she told the magazine.

“The children still have a father but I don’t have a husband. He really is dead to me and no, we won’t ever be friends again.”

She revealed adjusting to life as a single mother to the couple’s three children Jackson, Ava and River wasn’t easy.

“There were days in the beginning I would get up, put on a brave face and drop the kids at school, then I’d get to the back door and I would lie in a heap for the rest of the day unable to move — there were very dark days,” she said.

“I was completely gazumped when I realised Karl had gone.”

Karl Stefanovic and Cassandra Thorburn were together for more than 20 years before their split. Picture: Scott Barbour/Getty Images

She knew for months before things officially ended that her relationship wasn’t working anymore.

“I questioned and doubted myself about everything,” she said.

“I slept on the couch in front of the fire for months because I didn’t want to go near the marital bed. I was in a very dark place.”

While Thorburn struggled in for some time following the split, in another interview the following year she told Woman’s Weekly that she had become more strong, healthy and confident than she had been in a long time.

“The flip-side of that is I feel like we’re dead to his family and almost anyone from our old life,” she told the publication.

“There has been practically no contact. I feel like we’ve been discarded and disposed of, replaced by a whole new line-up of starters. It has been a real adjustment period for me.”

But a spokesman for Stefanovic’s has hit back on Thorburn’s comments to the magazine, telling Nine’s TheFIX they were “disappointed” by her comments.

“We are disappointed Cass would claim such inflammatory suggestions that we have alienated Karl’s children from our family,” the spokesman said.

“Nothing could be further from the truth. Karl regularly co-parents his children and has his loving family around them.”