Tyra Banks has never been one to stay quiet about reinvention, and she just applied that philosophy to her love life. The supermodel and entrepreneur confirmed this week that she has split from Louis Bélanger-Martin, her partner of roughly seven years, and that she is back on the dating scene.
How She Broke the News
Banks shared the update during an appearance on HOT 97 on Wednesday, Nov. 11, when she was asked about the biggest lesson she has learned from love and relationships. After pausing to think, she said it is never too late to start again. “I’m a single woman now,” she added.
She was candid about the path that led there. Banks explained that for a while she felt content with her mother and her son and had little interest in dating. That has since changed, she said, and she now feels feminine and open to romance again, rejecting the idea that age should close that door.
A day later, on Thursday, Banks reaffirmed the news when TMZ caught up with her on the street in New York City, telling the outlet she is dating and enjoying being single.
A Private Relationship
Banks and Bélanger-Martin, a Canadian executive who co-founded the private investment firm Groupe W Inc. in 1996, were first linked in 2019. They were photographed together in Los Angeles that August and later spotted dining twice in one week at New York restaurant Hutong.
The couple kept a low profile, making occasional public appearances such as the 2022 TIME 100 Gala. Their lives were intertwined professionally as well. In May 2024, Banks revealed they had been living and working together in Australia, where he held a senior role at her ice cream company, SMiZE Cream.
Banks frequently credited him with steadying her behind the scenes. In 2024 she said he helped her work through moments of self-doubt as a business owner, and she confided in him after her return to the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show runway that year. Neither Banks nor Bélanger-Martin has said when or why the relationship ended.
The Bigger Picture
What makes this moment resonate is not the breakup itself but the way Banks framed it. Celebrity splits are usually announced with careful statements and requests for privacy. Banks instead turned hers into a message about starting over at 52, the same kind of confidence-first branding she built across America’s Next Top Model and her business ventures.
For a figure who has spent her career telling others to own their story, she is now very publicly owning a new chapter of her own.
