HGTV’s Tarek El Moussa Feels ‘So Lucky’ After Several Years of ‘Absolute Hell’

Getty HGTV's Tarek El Moussa in December 2021

Tarek El Moussa is feeling fortunate this holiday season, reflecting on social media about how much his life has changed for the better in the years since his split from his ex-wife and former HGTV co-host Christina Hall. Recalling several years of “lonely holidays,” Tarek declared on Instagram that he’s “never going back” to the depressive state he was in during his breakup and before meeting and marrying Netflix’s “Selling Sunset” star Heather Rae El Moussa. Here’s what you need to know:

Tarek El Moussa Says He Feels ‘So Lucky’ About His Life Now

On December 27, 2022, Tarek posted a tribute to his wife of a year, who’s pregnant with their first child — a baby boy due in early 2023. Calling Heather “an absolute rockstar,” he marveled at how she makes the holiday season feel extra-special in their home, whether getting the perfect Christmas gifts for everyone or finding holiday pajamas for their family photo shoots with Tarek’s two children he shares with Hall, seven-year-old Brayden and 12-year-old Taylor.

Tarek ended his post by writing, “For a while there I had some lonely holidays and I’m never going back! I don’t know how she does it, but I feel so lucky.”

Tarek and Christina rose to fame on their hit HGTV show “Flip or Flop,” but separated in 2016, continuing to film together through their 2018 divorce. Christina got remarried that year to TV personality Ant Anstead and they had their son Hudson, now 3, before splitting in 2020. She married real estate broker Josh Hall in early 2022, around the same time that “Flip or Flop” ended its run.

Back in December 2018, Tarek tried to paint a rosy picture of his life as a “bachelor dad” to People magazine.

“It was super exciting decorating this year because it’s a fresh start in our new home as a family since the divorce,” he said, but he’s since revealed that he’d actually been struggling for several years and was just trying to put his life back together.

In 2020, he told Fox News that he’d survived “four or five years of absolute hell,” recalling how he’d been diagnosed with cancer twice — first with thyroid cancer and weeks later, with testicular cancer — and then a severe back injury that resulted in “a whole year of misery.”

The host of “Flipping 101” has since admitted that using painkillers and steroids to deal with the back pain and his hormones post-cancer led him to feel even worse.

In 2018 on “The Dr. Drew Podcast,” he revealed, “I was on like 10 Vicodin every day, and on top of that my meds are off, my hormones are off, I’m on pain meds and narcotics and I’m filming and I’m working. It was a really rough three, four years.”

Tarek told Fox News he hit his “rock bottom” in 2016, describing himself as “lonely, depressed, sad, almost giving up” as he and Christina separated. He leaned on his dad a lot when he was at his lowest.

Tarek explained, “He just reminded me on a daily basis…he’s like, ‘You’re just getting started, kid.’ He’s like, ‘This is just the beginning.’ And no matter how low I felt, I would just think about what he said, that I’m just getting started. I got plenty of time. I can come back. I can be better.”

Tarek El Moussa Found Love Again in 2019

Tarek met Heather on the Fourth of July in 2019 when they were both boating with friends.

In an Instagram post on their third anniversary of dating, Heather wrote, “We were both on separate boats in Newport, I was with some of my close friends and he was with his and I randomly, by chance, ended up jumping onto Tarek’s boat… Little did we know that moment would change both of our lives forever.”

Tarek didn’t recognize Heather and asked her out on a date, not realizing that he’d asked her out before. The couple detailed the story in December 2020, during an appearance on Amanda Hirsch’s “Not Skinny But Not Fat” podcast.

“She was like, ‘You already asked me out,'” Tarek recalled, explaining that Heather told him he’d previously slid into her DMs right before she filmed the “Selling Sunset” pilot, which debuted on Netflix in March 2019. At the time, Heather said she couldn’t go out with him because she was in a relationship.

Tarek said he checked his messages and saw that he had, indeed, messaged Heather before — and then asked if she wanted to go on a first date with him to Paris. Heather said no again, skittish after dating too many jerks. But, eventually, she agreed to meet up with Tarek.

“He exceeded all the expectations. He’s the most incredible man in the whole world,” she said on the podcast. “He is loyal, he is kind, he has the biggest heart. So everything that I thought of in that first moment of like being scared and vulnerable and like … he’s completely opposite.”

The couple’s new HGTV show, “The Flipping El Moussas,” is scheduled to premiere in March.