Karl Stefanovic and Cassandra Thorburn’s marriage was a ‘war zone’

As the old saying goes: No happy marriage ends in divorce.

And this appears to have been the case for Today show host Karl Stefanovic and his ex-wife, Cassandra Thorburn, who allegedly had blazing rows in the months before their separation in mid-2016 after more than two decades together.

In a bombshell interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Cassandra’s estranged half-sister, Allegra Bottrell-Thorburn, claimed she had witnessed the former couple having ‘bitter arguments’.

Karl and Cassandra’s marriage was a ‘war zone’ of never-ending screaming matches, Allegra, 22, was quoted as telling the newspaper.

This account conflicts with the narrative in some sections of the media that Cassandra, a 48-year-old former journalist and TV producer, was ‘blindsided’ by Karl’s decision to separate.

A widely-cited report by The Sydney Morning Herald in March 2017 claimed she had been left ‘devastated’ when her husband walked out in June the previous year.

According to a ‘family source’, she ‘had no inkling’ their relationship was in trouble when she ‘returned from doing the weekly grocery run to discover her husband had packed his bags and would not be returning’. 

Cassandra has denied Allegra’s account of her supposedly troubled marriage, telling Daily Mail Australia her much younger half-sister was ‘making up stories for attention’.

She said that Allegra ‘did not stay with us at all in the years before our separation’ and so could not have witnessed arguments between her and Karl.

Cassandra also claimed that Allegra had in fact been living in Mildura and Melbourne during this time, not in Sydney, where she and Karl shared a home in Lindfield. 

Karl declined via a network spokesperson to comment on Allegra’s claims to The Sunday Telegraph. 

However, the father-of-three did say he wished his ex-wife well in a wide-ranging interview with Daily Mail Australia earlier this month.

The 45-year-old Channel Nine host said he was ‘very reluctant to talk about’ his first marriage, adding: ‘No one wants to hear any more about it.

‘I just think it’s done and can we please all move forward because we have and we are. It happened. Let’s all just move forward.’

He emphasised that his children, Jackson, 20, Ava, 15, and River, 13, ‘don’t need to read blow-by-blow accounts from their parents in the press’ about their divorce.

‘It’s not an easy thing being the child of a high-profile person. They’re beautiful kids and I’m very very fortunate and now it’s time to move forward and trying to get on with our lives,’ he said.

Elsewhere in her interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Allegra alleged that Cassandra had become obsessed with Googling information about Karl and his new wife, Jasmine Yarbrough, after the couple’s wedding in Mexico in December 2018.

‘She just wants to know what people are saying. That is how she feels she is in control,’ the journalism student claimed. 

In an Instagram post on Sunday, Cassandra said these claims were completely untrue and that she had not spoken to her half-sister in two years. 

The two women had once shared a close bond, but became estranged after their father, Max Thorburn, died at the age of 72 on October 18, 2018.

They did not grow up together due to the fact Cassandra was in her mid-twenties when Allegra was born.

Max, a journalist turned local politician, separated from Cassandra’s mother, Pat, after 20 years of marriage and later remarried Allegra’s mother, Janelle Bottrell.  

In a brief summary of their relationship, Cassandra told Daily Mail Australia: ‘I haven’t seen her in years, and when I did it was only about once a year.

‘She’s much younger than me so we didn’t grow up together. She’s only two years older than my eldest child [Jackson]. I left home 10 years before she was born.’

Karl and Cassandra had been married for 21 years when they separated in mid-2016.

The Gold Logie-winning breakfast TV anchor met shoe designer Jasmine Yarbrough at a boat party five months later and they married on December 8, 2018 in Mexico.

The couple are expecting their first child together, a daughter, next month.