Stormy Daniels' Rocky Relationship History Is Full Of Drama

This feature contains references to domestic violence.

When Stephanie Clifford came up with the stage name Stormy Daniels, she never could have dreamed that she'd earn herself a spot in history books someday. She hadn't yet graduated when she began working at a strip club, telling Vogue that she performed under a monicker inspired by two things that impressed her high school self: Nikki Sixx's decision to name his daughter Storm and Jack Daniels whiskey.

By the time Daniels had her dalliance with Donald Trump, she was a successful adult film star whose career behind the camera was taking off. It was that fateful encounter with "The Apprentice" host that would play a role in a first for American politics: the indictment of a president. But for Daniels, the fascination with her flash-in-the-pan relationship with Trump became a business opportunity. She detailed it in her book, "Full Disclosure," launched a "Make America Horny Again" strip club tour, and tried her hand at stand-up. "It was the most terrifying experience of my life, and that's saying something because I've seen Trump naked," she told The Guardian of her comedy club experience.

In 2022, Daniels also scored a gig helping gay men find love on the OUTtv dating show "For The Love of DILFs." She said of her new job, "We want to believe in love. It's the one thing we can't put in a bottle." It's a good thing Daniels never stopped believing in love, but she certainly endured plenty of heartbreak before getting her happy ending.

Stormy Daniels' quickie Vegas wedding

At the beginning of her porn career, Stormy Daniels dated Brad Armstrong, who directed and co-starred with Daniels in the 2002 adult film "Heat." But their relationship ended when she learned that he was cheating on her with another actor, Jessica Drake. In her book "Full Disclosure," Daniels recalls the moment she caught them together at a mall. "Just like that day that I saw my high school boyfriend holding hands with that pretty girl at the coffee shop, there were Brad and my buddy Jessica, holding hands as they went up the escalator," she writes. She angrily confronted the pair before leaving and beginning the long process of trying to mend her broken heart.

Armstrong and Drake tied the knot in 2006, but Daniels got hitched to someone else far sooner. Her next relationship was with another adult film director, Pat Myne (pictured above). They'd only been a couple for two weeks when they took a business trip to Las Vegas together in 2003. According to Daniels, she was still hurting from Armstrong and Drake's betrayal at the time, and she attempted to numb the pain by drinking heavily. She drank so much, in fact, that she had no recollection of marrying Myne at a drive-through wedding chapel, even after an incredulous friend confronted her with their marriage license while Daniels was nursing a wicked hangover. But instead of getting their marriage annulled right away, Daniels and Myne lived together as a couple for a year.

Her tryst with Donald Trump

In 2018, The Wall Street Journal reported that Donald Trump's former attorney, Michael Cohen, had paid $130,000 in hush money to Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 presidential election. Cohen reportedly wanted to prevent Daniels from talking about Donald's alleged 2006 extramarital affair with her. But Daniels had already spilled all of the sordid details to InTouch in 2011. Sources told AP that Cohen threatened the magazine with legal action before the interview was published, so it gathered dust until 2018.

Daniels told InTouch that she met Donald at a golf tournament, and he asked her out to dinner. Since Donald was married to Melania Trump at the time, it's not shocking that the invite was allegedly not to dine at a public restaurant, but to join him in his hotel room. Daniels recalled her response to Donald purportedly inviting her to join him in bed as, "Ugh, here we go."

She also claimed that Donald vowed to get her a spot on the cast of "The Apprentice" after they had sex. However, while they remained in contact and even met up again, no actual offer to appear in his reality competition ever materialized. "That was sort of what he tried to bait me with for an entire year," Daniels said. Instead, what she eventually got was the payment that placed Donald in legal jeopardy — it was at the center of the Manhattan District Attorney's investigation that ended with a grand jury deciding to indict the ex-president, per CNBC.

Her domestic violence arrest

Stormy Daniels' second marriage was to publicist Michael Mosny, aka Mike Moz. In "Full Disclosure," she revealed that she was dating Moz when she received that fateful dinner invite from Donald Trump, and her boyfriend actually encouraged her to meet up with the reality star. Daniels recalls him saying, "It's a great opportunity for you." She didn't tell Moz that the meeting resulted in sex.

Daniels wed Moz in 2007, and their marriage made headlines two years later. At the time, Daniels was considering running for U.S. Senate as a GOP candidate. Her potential bid to primary incumbent Louisiana Senator David Vitter was earning her some ink in the papers, but she got publicity of the worst kind when she was arrested on domestic violence allegations. 

According to AP (via CBS News), Moz called the police and accused Daniels of striking him multiple times during an argument over actual dirty laundry. In "Full Disclosure," Daniels explained that she was angry with her then-husband for letting his father wash her clothes. "I had repeatedly told Moz that I was creeped out by his dad repeatedly going into our hamper and touching my dirty underwear," she writes. She also claimed that she was trying to grab her keys from Moz when the physical contact that he reported to the police happened, but she did not intentionally hit him. No charges were ever filed, but Daniels saw the writing on the wall for her political career and decided not to run for Senate.

If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.

Her sex story upset Dave Navarro

Stormy Daniels and Mike Moz were married from 2007 to 2009. However, Stormy Daniels was reported as having enjoyed a fling with rocker Dave Navarro in 2008. Early that year, they found themselves at odds over their conflicting accounts of a sexual encounter.

When Navarro appeared on "The Howard Stern Show" in February 2008, Howard Stern played the musician a snippet of an interview Daniels did with Bubba the Love Sponge. She claimed that she had a strange sexual experience with Navarro that she found unsettling and somewhat mystifying, although she did admit to making some assumptions about what was going on. Without getting into the NSFW details, we'll just say that Navarro disputed her account of how it went down. "I'm like, 'Are you f***ing kidding me?'" he said of his reaction to Daniels' interview. Navarro revealed that he first met Daniels at a porn convention. Shortly after they parted ways, he recalled, "I get a text from Stormy. 'Hey Dave, it's Stormy. I'm up at the Playboy mansion. Come play with me.'" Upon meeting her there, they started making out, which led to the aforementioned encounter.

According to Navarro, he actually texted Daniels a few days later and invited her to dinner. She accepted, but he had to reschedule. "Never heard from her again," Navarro said. However, he and Daniels were all smiles when they attended the Hollywood premiere of the comedy "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" together two months after their disagreement (above), so apparently, they hashed things out.

She got a restraining order against Mike Moz

Stormy Daniels' divorce from Mike Moz wasn't exactly amicable. In "Full Disclosure," Daniels claimed that she couldn't get him to sign their divorce papers. "One time I point-blank asked him: 'Why are you being such a pain in the a** about this?'" she wrote. "'You're my wife and you're staying that way,'" he allegedly responded. Daniels eventually proved him wrong, but Moz reentered the picture in 2011.

Someone had approached InTouch and attempted to sell the magazine a story about Daniels' alleged sexual encounter with Donald Trump. She received a call from a reporter who spouted off so many accurate details about what happened in that hotel room that Daniels thought Moz had to be the culprit. Because the magazine was going to publish its report regardless of whether Daniels shared her story in her own words, she agreed to do an interview. "My feeling was, 'F*** you, Mike Moz.' I didn't want him profiting off my life any more than he already had," she wrote. In its 2018 report, InTouch says that he corroborated Daniels' claims about Trump.

In December 2011, TMZ reported that Daniels had been granted a temporary restraining order against Moz. At the time, she was engaged to her third husband, Glendon Crain. Daniels claimed that Moz had harassed both her and Crain on multiple occasions, accusing her ex of threatening Crain's boss and having someone try to break into her car.

If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.

She convinced a boyfriend to do adult films

While she was filming her cameo in Maroon 5's music video for "Wake Up Call," a label exec asked Daniels if she'd be interested in directing a music video for a band called Hollywood Undead. She initially wasn't interested. However, after the band became more popular and the opportunity arose again, Daniels decided that it would be worth her time. She didn't initially hit it off with the group's drummer, Glendon Crain, when she met the band at a bar, but they bonded once Daniels learned that they were both huge fans of the sludge metal band Acid Bath. In "Full Disclosure," she recalls telling Crain, "If you know this band ... we are totally going to get married and have a baby one day."

Daniels and Crain eventually started dating and moved into together. While they were living in Las Vegas, the topic of children came up. According to Daniels, it was Crain who told her that he wanted to have a baby. She wrote, "'Okay,' I said. 'But there are terms. You have to do porn.'"

Daniels' logic was this: if she and Crain ever divorced, a judge who finds her adult film career objectionable might grant Crain sole custody of their child based on this reason alone. But if both parents are involved in the porn industry, this becomes a non-issue. Crain reluctantly agreed and went on to appear in dozens of X-rated movies under the name Brendon Miller.

She was blindsided by Glendon Crain's divorce filing

Stormy Daniels told the Daily Beast that her pregnancy prep was pretty brutal. "I'm not like a normal mom. I can't work while I'm pregnant. I did two years of work in one year," she said. She also became a target of cruel internet trolls who seemingly believed that sex workers shouldn't be mothers. But their vitriol couldn't ruin the joy of motherhood for Daniels. She and Glendon Crain welcomed their daughter, Caden in 2011. "I just consider myself to be especially blessed, and people who knock porn, well, it affords me to be with my daughter," she said.

Daniels and Crain got married in 2015, but three years later, their relationship began falling apart. In "Full Disclosure," Daniels reveals that she lied to Crain when InTouch interviewed her in 2011, telling him that she met with Donald Trump but did not have sex with him. So when InTouch published the interview in 2018, Crain was livid. 

After Daniels was arrested for touching a strip club patron during a performance in July 2018, Crain decided to pull the plug on their marriage — even though the charges against Daniels were dropped, per NPR. "He emptied our bank account, disappeared in the car with our daughter, and filed a temporary restraining order against me that prevented me from coming near her," Daniels recalled. Per TMZ, Crain accused Daniels of infidelity and said that he didn't want their daughter traveling with her on her strip club tour.

She had a bizarre bridesmaid

Stormy Daniels' fourth husband is another adult film star named Barrett Blade. But on Instagram, Daniels revealed that he had a different job when they first met: playing bass for a band called Dial-7. "Before his last name was Blade and before mine was Daniels, Barrett hit on a girl named Stormy after his show in Baton Rouge in 1998," she wrote. However, Daniels told The Guardian that Blade didn't gather up the courage to ask her on a date until 2022. The couple tied the knot the same year, and fans of "The Surreal Life" might recognize one member of their wedding party: Susan, Daniels' spooky doll. The star told Distractify that Susan was one of her bridesmaids.

The haunted doll also appears with Daniels on her paranormal investigation series, "Spooky Babes," and her dating show, "For the Love of DILFs." In regard to the latter, Susan isn't the only member of the family who gets to join Daniels at work — Blade is a cinematographer, so he helps film the series. Daniels told Paper that he was also an object of lust among the contestants on the show's first season.

When the couple isn't busy working together, they're enjoying the solitude of their horse farm. "When you marry your best friend, life is always going to be good. ... even on the days it's hard. Thank you [Barrett Blade] for giving me my dream home, life, and family," Daniels wrote in a December 2022 Instagram post.

The reaction to her sexual orientation surprised her

While trading barbs with the Twitter trolls who try so hard to get under her skin, Stormy Daniels appeared to come out as bisexual in January 2019. But although this information was new to many of her followers, it was not something that she'd ever attempted to hide. "The people I was around and the industries that I was in never really thought twice about it," she told Advocate Channel. "So it was kind of a shock to me that people thought that was such a big deal, it was very eye-opening to me." In an interview with The Guardian, Daniels revealed that she even dated an unnamed woman at the very beginning of her adult film career.

While Daniels has filmed many same-sex scenes over the course of her adult film career, she told Pink News that she saw her number of LGBTQ+ fans grow exponentially after she spoke out against Donald Trump — someone who is no ally of their community. At the time of this writing, Daniels resides in Florida. The state is the home of both Trump and his political foe, Governor Ron DeSantis, another Republican who has been accused of enacting regressive policies that chip away at the hard-won rights of LGBTQ+ citizens. Daniels told Attitude that she's concerned about how policies like the "Don't Say Gay" bill will impact younger members of her community and expressed relief that her daughter is home-schooled. "We seem to be taking so many steps backward," she said.

Her reaction to Trump's indictment

According to Stormy Daniels' attorney, Clark Brewster, her reaction to the news that Donald Trump had been indicted was somber and solemn. "The fact is that she feels bad that the guy has been charged," Brewster told USA Today. "On behalf of Stormy and honestly myself, there's no joy in seeing the man indicted." But on Daniels' Twitter page, the mood was more celebratory. "I have so many messages coming in that I can't respond ... also don't want to spill my champagne," she quipped.

Speaking to The Times, Daniels lamented that Trump wasn't brought to justice sooner for some of the other criminal acts he's been accused of, and she further explained why her feelings were vacillating between elation and soberness. "Whatever the outcome is, it's going to cause violence, and there's going to be injuries and death," she said. Daniels has experienced the unfettered hatred of some of Trump's most fervent supporters firsthand, saying that she began receiving disturbing death threats after the former president's indictment. Daniels is also concerned about how all of this hostility and aggression will affect her loved ones. "I feel like I'm a danger to anybody who I love or care about," she said.

But Daniels added that she will not allow Trump and his followers to make her cower in silence, and she harkened back to some of his misogynistic remarks when sending a message to them about who they're messing with, proclaiming, "This p***y grabbed back."