Jodi Centonze
The Other Woman
To the public, Jodi Centonze will always be referred to as “the other woman.” She maintained a 13 year affair with Schiavo while he was married to Terri.
Jodi Ann Centonze was born on February 14, 1965 in New York. She was briefly married to a man she met in her senior year at high school, but divorced him several years later.
Jodi met Michael Schiavo in July 1993 in a dentists office in Florida. Schiavo had just broken off his relationship with former girlfriend Cindy Shook, and won over $1 million dollars in a medical malpractice lawsuit against Terri’s doctors.
Immediately after their initial meeting, they began a multi-year affair which resulted in marriage in January 2006. While Terri was living in hospice, Jodi and Michael bore two children and purchased several homes. Jodi stated in Terri: The Truth that Terri’s mysterious collapse was God’s will, “I believe that God sent me to Mike…it was clearly God’s plan to take Terri that February morning in 1990.”
She stayed with Schiavo while he remained married to Terri because Terri “deserved better.” She didn’t want to leave Schiavo because this is what Terri’s family would have wanted.
Larry King asked Schiavo asked about his long-term relationship with Jodi while asserting his love for Terri. Schiavo responded, “I’m fortunate to have two women in my life that I love very much.” Schiavo said that Jodi had done more for Terri than Terri’s parents. (Larry King Live, Oct 23, 2007).
Schiavo announced his engagement to Jodi in his mother’s obituary in July 1997. However, Schiavo proposed marriage to Jodi in October 1994, and gave her an engagement ring (Terri: The Truth).
Jodi further wrote, “When I first met Mike [in 1993], it was an exciting thing because someone was interested. I never paid attention to the fact that Mike was the poster boy for ‘Guys with Baggage.’ I felt comfortable with him because I knew he had a wife, and he wasn’t going to be someone trying to get me into bed right away. I’m a very independent woman, always have been and I always will be. I didn’t need a man.”
Michael and Jodi built a home for themselves in 1995 in Oldsmar, Florida. He wrote that he used the money from the medical malpractice award to purchase the house. The house was placed in Jodi’s name only.
Schiavo first asked Jodi to marry him in October 1994, four years after Terri’s collapse. Jodi wrote of her engagement to Schiavo, “For the longest time, I didn’t wear it [the ring]. I knew there was Terri, and I knew that she was the first priority. Finally, when I started showing people the ring and they’d ask, “When?’, I’d say ’2000′ because it was so far away.”
Early in 2000, Jodi visited Terri Schiavo to say goodbye. Judge George Greer issued first court order on February 11, 2000 ordering that Terri’s feeding tube be removed. Jodi must have been confident that Terri would not live long in the year 2000.
Jodi wrote, “I was the mistress. Mike was the adulterer.” In Terri: The Truth, she asked, “Why didn’t Mike just divorce Terri and marry me? I find that question itself offensive. Why should he? Just because things didn’t work out they way they planned, is he supposed to dump her and get on with with next state of his life?”
Michael did get on with the next state of his life by living with Jodi and siring two children with her. Michael asserted that his relationship with Jodi had “grown into a marriage in everything but the eyes of the law.” Jodi told Michael that it was possible for a man to love two women at the same time.
Michael and Jodi were married in January 2006 in a Catholic Church, Espiritu Santo in Safety Harbor, Florida, in the diocese of Bishop Robert Lynch.
They were interviewed by Matt Lauer on the Today Show shortly after their wedding. Watch the interview here.
Jodi and Michael currently live in Clearwater, Florida with their two children, Olivia, 5, and Nicholas, 4. Schiavo works at the Pinellas County Jail as a nurse supervisor earning over $70,000 per year.
