Shanna Moakler is reflecting on her breakup from Oscar De La Hoya — and how they split custody of daughter Atiana.
“He said, ‘I won’t see you or the baby until she’s 16,’ [if I sued him for palimony],” Moakler, 48, claimed during the Wednesday, January 10, episode of the“Dumb Blonde” podcast. “He got out of the car, I’ll never forget this, and he goes, ‘I have more money than God. Don’t be too hard on me.’ And he left. I cried. I sued him for palimony, and I won. I really didn’t have a choice.”
Moakler started dating De La Hoya, now 50, in 1997, and the duo got engaged one year later. They welcomed Atiana, now 24, in 1999 less than one year before they split.
“He didn’t see the baby and I until she was about 16. She didn’t know her father growing up,” Moakler added. “They’ve made amends. He’s made amends with me. He’s apologized.”
Atiana, for her part, previously detailed her father’s estrangement in his The Golden Boy documentary, which dropped in July 2023.
“I would only see him every so often, maybe, like, once a year,” Atiana recalled. “And I remember — I think it might have been fourth grade or something — and we were supposed to get dinner and then go to Color Me Mine because I loved art. And I remember trying to think of, like, what I would say. Like, ‘Am I going to call him Dad?’ And I remember going to Color Me Mine and he painted, like, a cheeseburger, and I had the cheeseburger in my room for … it’s probably still somewhere, to be honest.”
She added: “I think a lot of people knew him better than I did because they watched his career. So my idea of him wasn’t necessarily from our relationship, but it was more from who I was told he was.”
Moakler also claimed on Wednesday that she split from De La Hoya over infidelity on the boxer’s part when Atiana was a toddler.
“There were all these third parties,” Moakler alleged. “He just lost his first fight. … I met him at Universal, and said, ‘Do you want this anymore?’”
Moakler said that De La Hoya assured her of his love months before she saw footage of him escorting his ex-wife Millie Corretjer to the Latin Grammy Awards.
“There he is holding hands with his now ex-wife. I just remember I lost my breath,” Moakler said. “There was no backlash [publicly]. I didn’t stand a chance. The next day they had a lawyer come to the house and say, ‘You and the baby need to move out.’ It just became just a s–tshow whirlwind. He never called me again. He had his assistant [tell me we were done]. I really thought in that moment that my life was over.”
Moakler eventually moved on with Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker, whom she said on Wednesday was “more the love of my life” than De La Hoya. Moakler and Barker, 48, wed in October 2004 before welcoming son Landon, now 20, and daughter Alabama, now 18. Moakler and Barker eventually split in 2008, nearly 14 years before he married Kourtney Kardashian. (Kardashian, 44, and Barker welcomed son Rocky in November 2023.)
Following Moakler and Barker’s divorce, they prioritized coparenting Landon and Alabama. Barker also remained close with former stepdaughter Atiana.
“I’m grateful that Barker was there, you know, as a father figure for my daughter. I have to be grateful that Shanna was a mother to Atiana, and just know my place, basically, you know?” De La Hoya told Entertainment Tonight in July 2023. “My place — I’m obviously a father, and I’m proud of it. But, again, I’m grateful for what they’ve done. Especially with Barker. He’s obviously stepped up to the plate.”
De La Hoya also shares son Jacob, 25, with Toni Alvarado, son Devon, 24, with Angelique McQueen and kids Oscar, 17, Nina, 14, and Victoria, 9, with Corretjer. He admitted in The Golden Boy that he “left it up to the mothers to take care” of his children.
