Rachel Uchitel fears Tiger Woods sex scandal will follow her to the ‘grave’

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After being revealed as one of the women who golf great Tiger Woods was cheating with, Rachel Uchitel became an overnight sensation 15 years ago when her scandalous affair was revealed.

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Uchitel’s affair with Woods rocked the sports world in 2009 and led to the dissolution of his marriage to Swedish model Elin Nordegren. 

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But with Woods, 48, teeing off at the Masters at Augusta National this week, Uchitel, 49, is reflecting on how the episode affected her personal life in the years that followed.

“When you are in a conversation piece that big that everyone wants to talk about, it’s going to go to your grave,” Uchitel told the Daily Mail in a new interview. 

With Woods’ marriage in shambles, Uchitel tells the publication that her own personal life took a hit and led to her having “trust” issues that have stayed with her in the years since.

“It’s affected my relationships. I have a very small world, I keep it that way. I don’t really trust a lot of people because what I’ve been through is something that a lot of people cannot understand,” she said.

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Uchitel has dealt with her share of tragedy — her father died of a drug overdose in 1990 and her fiance James O’Grady was killed in the 9/11 attacks. A photo of a tearful Uchitel holding O’Grady’s photo made front page news around the world.

“I lost my father when I was young in a tragic way. I lost my fiance from being killed by terrorists on 9/11 and I was in one of the biggest sex scandals of all time,” she said. “There is nothing ordinary about me, so I have to date extraordinary men. And I haven’t really found that.”

In the days after news of the affair made the rounds in 2009, the mother-of-one signed a nondisclosure agreement. In return, she got $5 million upfront with the promise of $1 million annually for the next three years.

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“His lawyers are saying, ‘We want all your text messages and here’s the price,’” she recalled in a 2021 interview with the New York Times, “and you’re like ‘screw you’ and you move into deal-maker mode and all of a sudden, it’s the rest of your life.”

Uchitel met Woods in 2008 through a mutual friend, retired New York Yankees slugger Derek Jeter.

“I knew him to be cheating on his wife from the first time I met him, well before we got together,” she told the Times. But she thought their relationship was going to be different.

After Nordegren learned of Woods’ infidelity, the pro golfer’s personal life unraveled. But despite thinking their union was different, Uchitel’s world also came crashing down.

Uchitel negotiated the payment because she knew the affair would have a lasting impact on her life.

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“I’m not an idiot, I’m not a hooker, I’m not a prostitute,” she said. “I was and am a very smart girl and that’s why I negotiated $8 million, because I knew it was going to affect my life.”

Uchitel initially denied she was cheating with Woods, but was outed as the other woman when Nordegren looked through text messages on his phone one evening and found one reading: “You are the only one I’ve ever loved.”

Nordegren replied to it, writing, “I miss you. When are we seeing each other again?” When Uchitel responded, Woods’ fairytale life came to a screeching halt.

And Uchitel wasn’t the only one Woods was cheating with. An issue of Us Weekly magazine hit newsstands with the headline, “Yes, He Cheated,” featuring photographs of the golf star, his wife and another of his alleged mistresses, Jaimee Grubbs.

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More than a dozen other women later came forward claiming they had also slept with the sportsman.

Woods eventually came clean, issuing a message on his website in which he admitted to letting “my family down.”

“I have not been true to my values and the behaviour my family deserves,” he said. “I am not without faults and I am far short of perfect. I am dealing with my behaviour and personal fallings behind closed doors with my family. Those feelings should be shared by us alone.”

In 2021, Uchitel, filed for bankruptcy. The Daily Mail reported that she had piled on almost $400,000 in debt.

But in 2023, Uchitel bounced back with a popular podcast, Miss Understood, in which she interviews notable names who have also been tarnished by a public scandal.

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“Listen, it’s not like I don’t know what people think of me. But I’ve spent the better part of 15 years trying to do something else that overshadows it,” she told the Mail this week. “Clearly, that’s a really hard thing to come back as the other woman. You don’t get a lot of grace in that.”

And she’s still trying to change the narrative that follows her 15 years later.

“People overlook things we’ve done before and things we do after because that is stuck in their mind. But it’s the least interesting thing about me. So, people that get to know me don’t even remember that,” she said.

mdaniell@postmedia.com

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