Chad Michael Murray knows he was too young when he married Sophia Bush in 2005.
“I was a baby. I didn’t know up, down, left, right,” Murray, 42, told The Cut in a profile published on Tuesday, May 21. “You move out there and you go, ‘Well, what am I supposed to do now? Get married? That’s exciting!’”
He was 23 years old when he tied the knot with Bush, his One Tree Hill costar and onscreen love interest, in April 2005. They shocked fans when they announced their breakup just five months later. Bush filed for an annulment in February 2006, citing “fraud.” The request was ultimately denied, and the pair were granted a divorce in December 2006.
Revisit Sophia Bush and Chad Michael Murray’s Relationship Timeline
Bush, now 41, shares Murray’s sentiment about being too young to get married. “I was a very naïve 21-year-old kid, and that’s all there is to it,” she said in an August 2021 episode of Michael Rosenbaum‘s “Inside of You” podcast. “I’ve tried to poke fun at being a dumb kid and whenever I’ve done that, it gets twisted into I’m talking s–t about somebody who I don’t even know anymore, who’s clearly a grown-up. I think you have to, like, laugh at who you used to be, but when people ask me about history that involves someone else … it’s not worth my time. It’s not a place where I harbor ill will or anything.”
The actress has openly discussed starting therapy in the years since their marriage, and Murray said he also finds counseling helpful.
In his profile for The Cut, Murray admitted that he started to struggle with his mental health amid his skyrocketing fame, noting he was “far more fragile than I ever put on” during the early years of One Tree Hill. (The show ran for nine seasons from 2003 to 2012 and he starred on seasons 1-6.) . He began having panic attacks around the same year he got married.
Celebrity Exes Who Worked Together After the Breakup
“I was around 23 and I had an event in Miami, but I couldn’t leave my hotel room,” he shared. “The world felt like it was closing in; I was having anxiety attacks.” He still battles agoraphobia, an anxiety disorder where one is afraid to leave environments they know.
A few months before the divorce was finalized, Murray turned to Christianity to help him find stability. “I woke up and felt unsettled. I didn’t like the direction that I was going in my life,” he said. “I went to church, and I got a tattoo of a cross on my left wrist, and I was like, I’m going to move myself in faith.”
He also started going to therapy. Murray said all the work he did on himself was for his now-wife Sarah Roemer. “I always told myself, ‘I’m doing this for my future wife and kids,’ and now here they are,” he explained. The couple married in 2015 and share three kids.
Bush, for her part, married Grant Hughes in 2022 before filing for divorce one year later. She has been dating soccer player Ashlyn Harris since fall.
