Valerie Bertinelli Breaks Her Silence About Split from Ex Mike Goodnough 5 Months After News of Their Breakup

Valerie Bertinelli is clarifying her relationship status and her fondness of ex-boyfriend Mike Goodnough.

The celebrity chef took to Instagram on Monday, March 3, to share a sweet tribute to her ex, who dated for 10 months before sources confirmed the pair’s split in November 2024. 

“I met the @therealhoarse in person a year ago today and I am irreversibly changed by him for the better. I know I am becoming a much stronger and more benevolent human for having met him and spent time with him,” the Indulge cookbook author wrote about the professional writer.

She continued, explaining that she was initially “attracted to his writing” before the pair actually met in person. “It’s heartfelt, authentic, smart, funny, sensitive, caring, and from the soul. And the way he puts words together is just sooo ridiculously beautiful. 🤩 I’m a big fan, can you tell?” Bertinelli said. “And as luck would have it, the human being in person is exactly as heartfelt, authentic, sensitive and caring as his writing.

“I feel so lucky to have gotten to know him, and to really see him and soak up his insights. I value all of our long conversations and they have lead me to interesting and fascinating places I rarely thought to go. I look at life with a different perspective and caring because of my experiences and conversations with him. And he’s been a big part of helping me heal from some old childhood wounds I never knew what to do with or even where to start,” she continued, calling for her followers to subscribe to Goodnough’s newsletter, Hoarse Whisperings, and “get the beautiful gift of what it’s like to be in his orbit.” 

She finished the caption by writing, “Thank you, Mike, we may no longer be a couple, but you’ll always hold a very special place in my heart. Love you. ♥️”

The Food Network alum has hinted at the split but this tribute is her first time explicitly saying that she and Goodnough are no longer together.

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Last week, Bertinelli talked to her fellow The Drew Barrymore Show panelists Barrymore and Ross Matthews about how breakups teach each person “how you can behave better.”

Earlier in February, she wrote another candid Instagram post that she’s learned from “two failed marriages” and that she “fumbled the last true good man I met.” She explained that with those relationships, she learned valuable lessons and how to seek an apology.

Bertinelli was married to financial planner Tom Vitale from 2011 until 2022, and before that she was married to late Van Halen frontman Eddie Van Halen from 1981 until 2007.