Who Is Rob Thomas' Wife? All About Marisol Maldonado

Rob Thomas and Marisol Maldonado met through a mutual friend in 1998

Rob Thomas and his wife Marisol Maldonado have been married since 1999.

In recent years, Maldonado has been open about her struggles with tick-borne diseases and has become an advocate for Lyme disease sufferers.

The couple stayed by each other’s side in all cases and came out of it all even stronger. The Matchbox Twenty singer is dedicated to being there for his wife and can always be counted on to post a photo of her on his Instagram page, along with a sweet caption about how much she means to him.

“I knew as soon as I kissed her that I would never, ever kiss another person,” Thomas told PEOPLE in a 2000 interview.

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The two have remained equally in love ever since. In the 2016 interview Yahoo, Thomas said: “Every anniversary we pat each other on the back, but at the same time when we got married the idea was that we’d be married for as long as we lived, so we don’t want to make too big a deal out of it. We’ve always gone this way, so it’s just a continuation of that promise.”

Although Maldonado has no public social media profiles and mostly stays out of the spotlight, she remains open about her health and support for her husband.

Here’s a rundown of everything there is to know about Rob Thomas’ wife, Marisol Maldonado.

They met in 1998 and got married a year later

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In 2000, the couple opened up to PEOPLE about their romance and said they were introduced by a mutual friend after a Matchbox Twenty show in Montreal in 1998. “Rob and I met for literally 10 minutes,” Maldonado said. “When I left, I looked at my girlfriend and said, ‘That’s the man I’m going to marry.’ ”

Although Thomas said he wasn’t looking for a relationship and just wanted to be a “single rock guy,” that changed when they met. The two began courting over the phone while Thomas was on tour, and went on their first date a few months later at a music festival in Boston. Thomas left and “told everyone I was going to marry her.”

In an interview with S. 2023 Yahoo, Thomas shared how the two stayed in touch after meeting, since he was on tour and she was still in school. He said he would call her every night and talk for hours.

On their first date, Thomas said the couple already felt like they “really knew each other,” and a year later they married in a small ceremony in California.

She is a retired model

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Maldonado is a retired model who worked in New York.

He has been fighting various tick-borne diseases for years

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Maldonado has been struggling with various illnesses for a long time. She struggled trying to figure out her symptoms and illnesses for more than a decade before being diagnosed in 2015 with several tick-borne illnesses, including Lyme disease.

She was dealing with late-stage neurological Lyme disease, babesiosis, and bartonella, all of which have different symptoms, and her infections caused Hashimoto’s disease and lupus-like symptoms, as well as atypical trigeminal neuralgia.

Because Maldonado’s Lyme disease was diagnosed so late, it was incredibly difficult to treat. In the 2017 interview party tonight she opened up about how difficult it was for her, saying, “It’s like you stand still and you can’t participate because everything keeps going on without you, and then the next day you wake up and the same thing happens. I don’t think about what I’m living. I exist… and I fight to hopefully one day live again.”

Thomas only provided support to his wife as she dealt with her health problems. In a 2019 interview with ABC, Maldonado talked about how much Thomas had done for her, such as giving her medication, therapy that required injections, checking in on tours and shows, and taking care of their dogs. She said people “have no idea that he worked his full six days a week … and he did it and he never complained. He’s everything to me.”

She had brain surgery

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In 2015, after years of trying to figure out her ailments, Maldonado had to undergo brain surgery to remove a lesion from the base of her brain.

Shortly after the surgery, Thomas spoke to PEOPLE to give an update on his wife, saying she was doing well, adding, “We don’t know what’s going to happen. We are glad that the operation went well.” Thomas postponed his tour to be by his wife’s side during her recovery.

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“This disease is like this strange alien that has moved into our life and taken up residence in my wife,” Thomas said. ET in 2017. “Sometimes he’s just not himself. Watching the person closest to you become someone other than themselves is like that [hard].”

She loves animals

Rob Thomas’s Instagram

Maldonado is a huge animal lover – so much so that she even started the advocacy charity Sidewalk Angels, which works with animal rescue shelters, along with Thomas. The venture was inspired by the death of the couple’s dog, Tyler, whom Thomas described as their “first love” in a 2019 interview. Forbes. “We’ve been in a position where we’ve been able to help a lot of people with their charities, and I think we wanted to figure out where we could be a catalyst for change,” Thomas said. “And no-kill shelters have always been big on our list.”

In an interview with PEOPLE in 2020, Thomas said they’ve helped more than 30 shelters get started or provide them with the funding they need. He added that the couple had two rescue dogs of their own and talked about how he hopes their foundation can help animals and people who want to help them whenever possible.

She inspired some of Thomas’ music

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It’s probably no surprise that Maldonado inspired some of Matchbox Twenty’s greatest songs.

In the interview for 2019 ForbesThomas said: “Some of the best songs I’ve ever written came out of our relationship.”

He added that the song “If You’re Gone” was inspired by his wife, explaining that when they first met, he was on the road a lot, and she was in college and didn’t know if she wanted to commit to rock stardom. The song was “kind of a comeback song.”

Thomas was also inspired to write songs like “Your Diamonds” and “Pieces” after watching his wife struggle with health issues for nearly 20 years. According to Art ET interview, “Pieces” was written while Thomas spent hours in the Mexican desert waiting for Maldonado to receive treatment.

She is the stepmother

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Thomas and Maldonado have no children together, but she is stepmother to Thomas’ son.

She has been helping Thomas with his career since they met

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Maldonado wasn’t just Thomas’ wife or the source of inspiration for his songs: she was also by his side through almost every step of his career.

In the interview for 2019 ForbesThomas talked about working together, saying they met shortly before he became very famous and “informed a lot of the decisions I’ve made since then.”

He added: “She runs my career with me and my manager. She is the first person to hear everything I write. She always chose singles.”

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In a 2019 interview with ABC, Maldonado echoed the same sentiment, saying they were young when they met and “created this together.”

She added: “Everything people see, even when he’s on stage – every hairstyle, every movement, every song – it’s something we’ve been creating together for the last 20 years. We were on a trajectory and we were going somewhere.”

They are best friends

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Thomas isn’t shy about talking about what makes his relationship with Maldonado work. He has stated several times that, at the end of the day, the two are close friends who love being with each other.

In the interview for 2019 ET, said, “The other night, my wife and I were out and we realized that after three or four hours, the two of us could just sit by ourselves and goof off** like you do with your friends. We had just as much fun alone as when we were in the company of a bunch of our friends.”

He called her his “best friend”, saying they would still be best friends even if their relationship ended.

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Source: HIS Education