David Justice opens up about the challenges and cultural clashes that led to his short marriage with Halle Berry, revealing candid thoughts on love, expectations, and the realities of blending two very different worlds.

In a rare and candid interview, former Major League Baseball star David Justice has revealed the personal struggles and doubts that led to the end of his marriage to actress Halle Berry.

Speaking on the *All the Smoke* podcast on August 7, 2025, Justice offered an intimate look at the early months of their relationship and the cultural and personal clashes that ultimately drove them apart, five years after their 1993 wedding.

Justice, 59, who played for the Atlanta Braves among other teams, recalled how the initial honeymoon phase faded quickly. “We were still in that honeymoon state until about five months after we got married,” he said.

It was then that the reality of their differences began to sink in, especially when Justice started to consider the prospect of having children with Berry.

“I’m looking at my mom — and I’m a Midwest guy. So, in my mind, I’m thinking a wife at that time should cook, clean, \[be] traditional, you know?” he explained.

He described a moment of tough self-reflection, asking himself, “If we have kids, is this the woman I want to have kids with and build a family with?”

Justice confessed, “At that time, as a young guy — she don’t cook, don’t clean, don’t really seem like motherly, and then we start having issues.”

The former MLB player painted a picture of a relationship marked not by major scandals or conflicts but by a mismatch of expectations and values. He admitted, “My knowledge and my understanding, my wisdom around relationships just wasn’t vast.”

Raised in a traditional environment, Justice struggled to reconcile his upbringing with Berry’s independent lifestyle and career ambitions.

Justice also opened up about the whirlwind nature of their courtship. Berry proposed to him after knowing him for just five months in 1992, and while he agreed, he admitted,

“I don’t know if my heart was really into it, but I didn’t want to make her feel bad and say no, you know, or \[if] I was just in the moment.”

Their marriage faced additional pressures as Berry’s star was on the rise. Justice mentioned the physical distance created by their respective careers, noting, “We spent a lot of time apart because she was doing movies in this country, that country.”

He lamented that “we honestly probably could have made it if I knew about therapy. If we knew about therapy, we probably could have made it.”

Yet he insisted, “We never had any major issues like that,” underscoring that their split was more about growing apart than any dramatic fallout.

The couple divorced in 1997, after which Justice remarried Rebecca Villalobos Justice in 2001. He is a father of three and has often reflected on the lessons learned from his early marriage to Berry.

On the other side of the story, Halle Berry, 58, has been open about her views on relationships and her past marriages.

Currently dating singer-songwriter Van Hunt, Berry has dismissed rumors that there is something “wrong” with her for not maintaining long-term relationships.

On *The Drew Barrymore Show* in February 2025, she said, “Who’s to say I want to keep a man? I don’t want to keep the wrong man. Like, I’m not crazy, right?”

Her relationship with Hunt, who proposed to her in June 2025, appears stable, though Berry has kept the future open.

“I think we will get married just because, out of the people I’ve been married to, this is the person I should have married,” she said. “And I feel like I should, we should get married, but it’s not because we feel like we have to.”

Berry’s romantic history also includes marriages to singer Eric Benét and actor Olivier Martinez, with whom she shares a son, Maceo-Robert, 11. She is also mother to Nahla, 17, from her previous relationship with Gabriel Aubry.

Justice’s reflections reveal the challenges of blending vastly different worlds — a professional athlete with Midwest values and a Hollywood star with an independent, career-driven mindset — at a time when conversations about marriage roles and expectations were still evolving.

As Justice put it, “Because I was young and had only been in one real relationship before her,” he was still learning what marriage truly meant.

His story offers a rare glimpse behind the scenes of a high-profile relationship shaped by love, cultural clashes, and the search for personal growth.

Their marriage, though brief, was a chapter that shaped both of their futures — one that continues to spark curiosity and reflection among fans and observers today.