“We’re Still Great Mates”: Lisa Curry and Grant Kenny Were Australia’s “Golden Couple” — What Happened to Their Family After the Marriage Ended Was Far More Complicated
For years, Lisa Curry and Grant Kenny were one of Australia’s most recognisable sporting couples.
She was the golden girl of Australian swimming. He was one of the country’s best-known ironman champions. Together, they appeared to embody the kind of sporting fairytale that seemed almost too perfect to be real.
They married in 1986 and went on to have three children — Jaimi, Morgan and Jett — building a family life that unfolded largely in the public eye.
But behind the medals, magazine covers and image of the “golden couple”, their marriage was far more complicated than it appeared.
And what happened after they went their separate ways would become an even more remarkable part of their story.
The couple Australia watched grow up
Lisa and Grant were both at the height of their sporting careers when they married. Their relationship became part of the Australian sporting landscape, with the pair often portrayed as one of the country’s golden couples.
But after 23 years of marriage, their relationship came to an end.
At the time, the split attracted plenty of attention. Yet Lisa has consistently described the decision in very different terms from the dramatic version of divorce that the public might have expected.
Years later, speaking to the ABC, she said they had simply reached a point where they were moving in different directions.
“We just felt like we were kind of going in different directions after so many years,” she said.
Then came the line that perhaps best explained what remained between them:
“We’re still great mates.”
It was a simple description, but it would prove to be important.
Because Lisa and Grant were no longer husband and wife — but they were still Mum and Dad.
They chose to stay close for their children
Rather than allowing the end of their marriage to become the end of their family unit, Lisa and Grant remained closely involved in their children’s lives.
Lisa moved only a short distance away, and their son Jett, then a teenager, could simply skate down the road to his mother’s house for dinner.
It was an unconventional arrangement, but one that allowed their children to continue having both parents nearby.
For Lisa, that mattered deeply.
She had experienced the absence of parents in her own childhood and was determined that her children would have something different. She and Grant remained committed to being present for Jaimi, Morgan and Jett, even after their marriage had ended.
There was no pretending that nothing had changed.
Their marriage had ended.
But their family had not.
Then came the hardest chapter of all
For Jaimi, life became increasingly difficult during her teenage years.
Lisa and Grant spent years trying to support their eldest daughter through serious health struggles. What followed was a long period of uncertainty, hope and heartbreak for the entire family.
Lisa has spoken about how difficult it was to watch someone she loved so deeply struggle for so many years.
In 2025, she described the experience as a battle that had already broken the family’s hearts long before Jaimi’s final days.
“The grief started before she was gone,” Lisa wrote.
She described living with hope and fear while watching her daughter’s health deteriorate, saying the experience was “all-consuming”.
And throughout those years, Lisa and Grant remained united in one thing: their daughter.
Their marriage had ended more than a decade earlier.
Their role as Jaimi’s parents never had.
“We were there when she took her first breath”
When Jaimi died in September 2020, aged 33, Lisa and Grant faced the loss together.
In a tribute after her passing, Lisa captured the extraordinary beginning and end of their daughter’s life in one devastating sentence:
“We were there when she took her first breath. And we were there when she took her last.”
It was perhaps the clearest reminder that, whatever had happened between Lisa and Grant as husband and wife, they remained connected by something much deeper.
They had welcomed Jaimi into the world together.
And when her life came to an end, they were together again as her parents.
A new understanding of why the marriage ended
For years, the reasons behind Lisa and Grant’s separation were largely discussed in terms of two people growing apart.
But in 2026, Lisa offered another deeply personal piece of the story.
Speaking openly about perimenopause, she revealed that the hormonal changes she experienced had affected her mood, confidence and relationship in ways she did not fully understand at the time.
She said perimenopause “played into the break-up a lot”, describing periods of irritability, exhaustion and a profound sense that she had lost touch with herself.
“There were days when I was exhausted,” Lisa said, recalling how Grant would notice changes in her mood.
She has since spoken about the importance of women understanding what is happening to their bodies — and of couples being able to talk openly about it.
It does not rewrite the story of her marriage to Grant.
But it adds another layer to a relationship that, for years, was reduced to the simple explanation that two people had simply grown apart.
And then Lisa found love again
Lisa eventually found love with Mark Tabone, whom she married in 2018.
Remarkably, Grant was not pushed out of the family picture.
Instead, a new kind of family began to take shape — one in which Lisa’s former husband, her new husband and her children could all remain part of the same extended circle.
Lisa has previously spoken warmly of the relationship between Grant and Mark, making clear that there was no need for the two men to compete for their place in her life.
It was less conventional than the family Australia had once known.
But it worked.
And after everything the family had endured, perhaps that mattered more than appearances ever could.
More than an ex-husband and ex-wife
There is an understandable temptation to look back at Lisa Curry and Grant Kenny and see only the sporting fairytale that ended.
But that misses the most meaningful part of their story.
They were husband and wife for 23 years.
They were parents for more than three decades.
And even after their marriage ended, they remained connected through the lives of the children they had raised together.
Jaimi’s death made that bond impossible to ignore.
The image of Lisa and Grant standing together as parents at the beginning and end of their daughter’s life says more about their relationship than any description of their divorce ever could.
They did not remain a married couple.
They became something else.
Something quieter.
Something more complicated.
And, in the years that followed, something that neither of them seemed willing to let go of.
For Lisa and Grant, the story was never simply about how their marriage ended.
It was about what remained when it did.