HGTV Star Hilary Farr's Divorce Was Messier Than Anyone Knew: 'Horrendous'

"Love It or List It" became a big hit with home reno lovers, but fans may not have gotten to enjoy the HGTV show had Hilary Farr not undergone a difficult divorce. The series debuted in September 2008, when her 26-year marriage to producer Gordon Farr fell apart. Hilary keeps her personal life pretty private, but she has given insight into how her painful divorce gave her the will to audition for "Love It or List It." While she navigated what she deemed a "horrible, horrible divorce," Hilary developed complicated emotions that she needed to channel.

And the HGTV show became where she directed those feelings. "[I] needed to deal with that anger," she said at the Top Ten Event in her native Canada in 2013 (via Notable Life), adding that she wanted to expend that energy on crushing her audition. This wasn't the first time Hilary described the painful nature of her divorce. In a couple of 2023 interviews in which Hilary discussed her sudden departure from HGTV, she expressed gratitude for the role "Love It or List It" had during that dark period of her life. "It's got me through hard times," she told People in December 2023.

In addition to giving her something meaningful to focus on, the show also gave her the financial means to navigate the divorce. "I was still in the middle of a divorce that was horrendous, and it was a godsend because it meant I could pay the lawyers and because it was a diversion, which I needed," she told Vulture. But beyond making it clear that it was unpleasant, Hilary has refrained from addressing her marriage and ex-husband.

Hilary Farr kept the tragic details about her divorce to herself and continued to take a similar approach to her love life. As far as we know, Farr is single at the time of this writing, even though fans of "Love It or List It" have long conjectured that she and her co-host, David Visentin, were an item. "Does anyone else feel like they're in love? It's that or the editors are messing with us. You cannot convince me otherwise," a Reddit user asked in a January 2023 thread.

We can't blame the fans. Farr and Visentin had great chemistry indeed, with their onscreen banter becoming a big part of the show's appeal. However, Visentin has been married to his wife, Krista, since 2006 and lives in Canada with his family, while Farr lives in the U.S. Even though they sometimes acted like a married couple on TV, Farr and Visentin's relationship was never romantic. And even though she left the show in 2023, the two are still close. "Hilary and I will be friends forever. I love her," Visentin told TV Insider in 2025.

Besides enjoying Farr as a person, Visentin is grateful for her role in shaping the show, which he continues to host alongside Page Turner now. "You can't work with somebody for that long and not appreciate them as a human being and have love for them. I appreciate everything she gave to this show since 2008. I mean, it got to be where it is because of her," he said.