Kristi Noem has filed for divorce from her husband of more than 30 years, citing irreconcilable differences months after his cross-dressing online fetish became public.
Court documents submitted April 6 in Hamlin County list irreconcilable differences as the grounds for the split between the former Homeland Security secretary and her husband, Bryon Noem. The papers did not appear on the county’s online court service until Monday.
The filing lands just months after the couple’s private life was dragged into public view, and it closes a long chapter that began when they wed in 1992. They have three adult children.
In March, Daily Mail reporting exposed Bryon Noem’s cross-dressing fetish and explicit exchanges with online porn models. The outlet reported he had sent at least $25,000 to fetish models through PayPal and Cash App, with payments from an alias account typically ranging from $500 to $1,000. He used the name “Jason Jackson,” according to that reporting. One model said she worked out who he was after accidentally calling and hearing a voicemail greeting for Noem Insurance, the South Dakota agency he runs.
A spokesman for Kristi Noem said at the time of the revelations that she was “devastated” and that the family had been “blindsided.”
By July, Bryon had left the couple’s home in Castlewood, South Dakota, and was living about 20 miles away. When a local South Dakota news outlet asked about the divorce, he answered in a single line.
"I can’t comment right now."
That same month, the Daily Mail reported Kristi’s plans to end the marriage after speaking with her mother, Corinne Arnold. Arnold said her daughter told her at a family birthday party that she was ending the marriage and had hired a Sioux Falls lawyer.
Arnold did not dress it up as a surprise.
"It has been difficult, but we knew this was coming, that they were going to get divorced."
She added:
"I feel bad, sick that they're getting a divorce, but what else can you do?"
The fetish exposure hit in the same stretch as a March congressional hearing where Kristi Noem refused to say under oath whether she had an affair with longtime adviser Corey Lewandowski. Bryon watched from the audience. The pair have long denied the affair allegations. The hearing came shortly before her departure from the Department of Homeland Security, where she and Lewandowski had worked during her one-year tenure in the Trump administration.
Trump’s reaction to the affair reporting was brief and direct.
"Wow, well, I feel badly for the family if that's the case, that's too bad."
After leaving DHS, Noem took a role as special envoy for the Shield of the Americas at the State Department. Weeks after she left the department, the Daily Mail published photos of Bryon posing in women’s clothing tied to the earlier exposure.
In August, Kristi Noem and Lewandowski were photographed having lunch in Minnesota and were seen cycling along Lake Minnetonka. An unidentified source described them as “closer than ever.” Days later, Noem attended the unveiling of a life-sized bronze statue of herself in Pierre, South Dakota, honoring her six years as governor. Her mother and grandchildren joined her. Bryon and Lewandowski did not.
None of that settles the denied affair claims. It does show how fully the couple’s marriage, already strained by the March revelations, had moved into public view while divorce papers were already in motion.
The Hamlin County filing is now on the record. The grounds are plain: irreconcilable differences. The timeline is plain too. A three-decade marriage met a very modern kind of scandal, and the legal paperwork followed.
Public office does not cancel private failure, and it does not require anyone to pretend the fallout is tidy. When the record is this clear, voters and families alike can judge the conduct for themselves.
