• April 19, 1999
• Vol. 51
• No. 14

Not So Rosy

Tom Arnold and His Wife, Julie, Go Their Separate Ways

It's hard being married and having two careers and traveling around," Tom Arnold, 40, once told MTV's Road Rules. He was talking about the marital woes of Bruce Willis and Demi Moore, but the sentiment might well apply to Arnold's own marriage. He was often away from his wife, Beverly Hills hairstylist Julie Champnella, 25, and, as he also told MTV, he loved "to hang out and do guy stuff." In fact, Arnold celebrated the couple's first anniversary by biking across Iowa with some pals. He will likely soon have even more time for guy stuff; on March 30 the couple announced they were divorcing after 3½ years of marriage. The split was "an extremely difficult and heartbreaking decision for both of them," says a publicist for the couple, "because they really do care for each other very much."

The pair's low-profile relationship marked a dramatic change for Arnold, whose first marriage, to Roseanne, sometimes seemed more like a circus act than a love match. The pair mud wrestled for a magazine cover, exposed their tattooed posteriors at the 1989 World Series, and announced a three-way "wedding" that included Arnold's assistant at the time, Kim Silva. Roseanne filed for divorce in 1994 after four years of marriage, claiming that Tom physically and verbally abused her, charges he denied.

Within weeks of his split from Roseanne, Arnold met Champnella, then a 21-year-old Eastern Michigan University student who was visiting her brother Eric in Los Angeles. The pair married in Dearborn, Mich., July 22, 1995, before 650 guests, with the late Chris Farley as best man. They settled down in a five-bedroom, eight-bath Mediterranean-style home in Beverly Hills, while Arnold, on a comeback with supporting roles in True Lies and Nine Months, began starring in duds like The Stupids and Big Bully. Julie planned to become a teacher but dropped out of college to decorate their home and look after Tom before becoming a hairstylist. As for the split, friends and family are mum. "It's personal," says Arnold's attorney Manley Freid. "Just differences in lifestyle."