A former prominent Bloomberg journalist who decided to quit her job and infamously divorced her husband to pursue a relationship with jailed 'Pharma Bro' Martin Shkreli, only to be dumped through his lawyers, has said that she doesn't have any regrets. Christie Smythe, 39, said that she is instead happier since giving up her "perfect little Brooklyn life" with her former financier husband.
"Part of me will always love Martin... I absolutely don't have any regrets about what, you know, what has transpired," Smythe told Fox News Digital ina recent interview. She also said that she has come a long way since being dumped by Shkreli.
Happy and No Regrets
Smythe said she is a lot happier today and has "no regrets" about giving up her "perfect little Brooklyn life" for Shkreli after she started covering him for his work in 2015 when she broke the news of his arrest for securities fraud.
Smythe's life changed after that. She started meeting Shkreli for interviews when he was in jail and eventually fell in love with him. What "transpired" was a shocking, viral tale of Smythe quitting her plush job as a Bloomberg reporter and marriage after falling in love with Shkreli, whom she initially kissed in a prison cell that "smelled of chicken wings."
"I was the reporter who broke the story of the arrest of a very notorious figure. I got to know him over the course of reporting on him, I eventually developed such a close relationship with him that I left my job and decided to pursue a romantic relationship with him... people found that very shocking," Smythe told Fox News Digital.
However, the romance came to an abrupt end. Shkreli broke up with her through his attorneys after she made the relationship public in an Elle magazine piece, but the former reporter claims she has no resentment toward him.
Smythe will tell her side of the story in a new Substack memoir, "SMIRK: How I Fell in Love With America's Most Hated Man," which she plans to publish. However, before that, she said a lot about her whirlwind romance and breakup with Shkreli on Fox News Digital.
"So we are friends, we talk. I am looking forward to seeing what he does when he gets out [of jail]. I am very excited to see him ... I imagine that there will be a very big hug," she added about his September 2023 release.
Still Attached
Smythe still feels strongly attached to Shkreli although their romance is long over. She still remembers the way she was dumped. When Elle sought out for response, it turned out that Shkreli was so furious that he broke up with her through an attorney because she had spoken to the magazine. "Mr. Shkreli wishes Ms. Smythe the best of luck in her future endeavors," the brief statement read.
However, she still waits to see the day Shkreli comes out of jail. After being charged with running a pyramid scheme to prop up his drug enterprise in 2015, Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in prison. He was already regarded as one of America's most despised figures after raising the price of an AIDS medicine from $13.50 to $750.
Smythe plans to mention all these in her memoir. "You will be taken along on my journey from when I was a plucky Bloomberg legal reporter trying to ascend a career ladder, to my collision with an errant young striver whose many missteps and impulsive decisions caused him to fall directly in my path," her website promises about the upcoming book.
"This is great, I am proud of you and thank you for thinking about my feelings as well. I hope it is a smash hit," Shkreli allegedly wrote in an email about the book.
Smythe told Fox that she didn't agree with how an Elle profile described her connection with Shkreli, and that others had mistakenly assumed she had intentionally sacrificed happiness to be with Shkreli.
"The framing was that I throw away my life for Martin Shkreli, and yeah, I kind of object to that characterization because my life has continued. I did not throw anything away. In fact, I am in a much happier place now than I used to be," Smythe told the outlet.
Smythe said that she was attracted to Shkreli immediately after meeting him, but she didn't believe her intuition. She eventually understood, however, that the criminal mastermind was not who everyone said he was.
However, things changed just because of one interview with Elle. Everyone assumed Shkreli had dumped her when she spoke to the magazine about their romance, but her phone rang a few days later.
"He called me and he said, 'Is this Christie Smythe the celebrity?' And he was like, tickled by it," she said. "Anyway, the point is that we are still friends. We are, you know, nothing more because there's really no way to have a romantic relationship with someone in prison when you can't even see him."
Smythe resigned from Bloomberg in 2018 and divorced her spouse the following year. She made the romance public in 2020, much to the chagrin of Shkreli, who had cautioned her not to talk about it in the media.
Smythe had stated that she would wait for Shkreli as he completed his sentence. She also stated that her eggs had been frozen.
She hasn't seen Shkreli in almost two years due to COVID-era rules, which she describes as a "horror," but hopes things will change soon.
