According to The Hollywood Reporter, the pair discussed their relationship and the moments leading up to their exits from ABC on Tuesday during the first episode of their new podcast show, Amy & T.J. 

“I guess the best way to sum us up, Amy and T.J., is that we’re the folks who lost the jobs we love because we love each other,” Holmes, 46, said on the podcast. “And that is the bottom line and that is why we’re here now.”

Robach and Holmes’ relationship went public in November 2022 after a tabloid released photos of the two together on several occasions. The following month, Blavity reported that ABC News president Kim Godwin had announced the former anchors were taken off the air after learning they were an item. 

“After a lot of thought, I am taking Amy and T.J. off the air as we figure this out,” Godwin said.

Robach and Holmes said their respective bosses had contacted them regarding the president’s decision after the network started to receive attention following the tabloid report.

“We each got a phone call from our bosses saying that they had made the decision — and they made it again a point to say we hadn’t violated any company policy — but because we had become a distraction that they thought it would be best if they temporarily took us off the air to let things quiet down,” Robach, 50, recalled. “And I remember I said … Now this is going to be a story if you take us off the air, please don’t do this.”

“That was the morning we knew we would not be going back to that network,” Holmes added. “We knew that phone call sealed it, because you can’t come back from that.”

“I was sick to my stomach because we knew what was coming once that announcement was made,” Robach recalled.

The pair said they had initially planned to announce their relationship with a press release detailing their decision, but the news had already gotten out to the public.

“We thought in January, we’re going to go and walk in and explain to management that we are a couple … We’d actually even talked about doing it earlier,” Robach recounted. “Right before the pictures came out, we thought, ‘Should we tell them what’s going on?’ And we thought, ‘Let’s just get these divorces cleaned up and then let’s do it.’ But we had every intention of doing it and we didn’t believe, and I don’t think we still do believe, we were doing anything technically wrong.”

“If we’d have put out statements about divorces, and then people found out we were dating, they would raise some eyebrows and go, ‘Oooh, okay, that’s still an interesting topic,'” Holmes added. “But doing it this way, the story became mainstream when they’re able to say ‘Morning Show Stars Suspended.’ That’s now a major story given the brand we were attached to. That’s a big, big deal. And we knew that that was going to be a big deal.”

Holmes and Robach previously discussed how they wanted to share their side of the story. In November, Blavity reported that the pair announced they had struck a deal with iHeartRadio to release their new podcast series.

Robach said they had a few other names in mind for the podcast, including “‘Scandal-less,’ because this was a scandal that wasn’t.”

Despite everything they had gone through, Robach said she still believed in love.

“In the end, all of us are always rooting for love,” she said, according to People. “It doesn’t always happen when you want it to happen. And it’s undeniable when it’s real and it’s something you have to navigate and it’s not easy.”