Just 31 days ago, the news whiplashed Chicago almost as hard as those dark, joyless days when No. 23 called it quits. It looked as if the marriage of Michael and Juanita Jordan would end in heartbreak. She wanted a divorce.
On Monday the script took a head-turning plot twist: The Jordans will give it another shot.
The Jordans jointly withdrew their divorce case Monday, agreeing to attempt a reconciliation. On Jan. 4, Juanita Jordan filed for divorce after 12 years of marriage.
“We have decided to attempt a reconciliation and our efforts to do so will be greatly enhanced if the privacy of our personal lives is respected,” read a one-sentence statement issued by the couple.
A one-page pleading filed Monday before Lake County Judge Gary Neddenriep said only that “this cause is dismissed without prejudice.”
Michael Jordan’s attorney, Fred Sperling, and Juanita Jordan’s lawyer, Donald Schiller, declined to comment further. “Juanita and Michael’s statement says everything they have to say,” Sperling said.
Neither attorney would comment on what led to Monday’s development or who initiated the attempt at reconciliation.
However, friends close to the couple said that the divorce filing came as a surprise to the basketball legend and that recently he had begun pushing for the couple to get back together.
“Michael has been trying to smooth this over since it happened and just make sure things didn’t get out of hand,” one friend said.
Juanita Jordan’s divorce pleading had cited “irreconcilable differences” that caused the “irretrievable breakdown of the marriage.” She said in the filing that previous attempts at reconciliation had failed, and “future attempts at reconciliation would be impracticable and not in the best interests of the family.”
Juanita Jordan, 42, sought custody of the couple’s three children, Jeffrey, 13; Marques, 11; and Jasmine, 9, as well as possession of the family’s 25,000-square-foot gated house in Highland Park and a “fair and reasonable sum for temporary and permanent maintenance.”
Fortune magazine estimated Michael Jordan’s wealth at $398 million in September.
Last month, Jordan, 38, suggested that an effort at reconciliation was in the offing.
“That’s something probably we’ll work on,” Jordan told reporters. “I don’t think I want to sit here and go through that. We have kids, obviously, and we want to make sure that’s the focus. Outside of that, when the time comes, you guys will hear about it.”
The couple met in March 1985 at a downtown restaurant during Jordan’s second season with the Bulls. They married at 3:30 a.m. Sept. 2, 1989, at the Little White Chapel in Las Vegas. Eighteen months later they reached a postnuptial agreement, her lawyer at the time, Michael Minton, told the Washington Post last month. Minton did not disclose the terms of that agreement.
Jordan stunned Chicago twice with news of his retirement from basketball–in 1993, the year his father was murdered, and in 1999 after the Bulls’ sixth championship. Both times, he expressed a desire to spend more time with his family.
“I have been selfish in my career,” Jordan said in 1993. “Now . . . it is time to be unselfish and spend a little more time with my family, my wife and kids and get back to a normal life, if that is possible.”
Last year, he surprised the city one more time with news of his return to basketball after a two-year hiatus, but with the Washington Wizards, the team he had led as a front-office executive the year before.
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The move put him on the road again, though Jordan maintained a residence in the city, friends close to Jordan said.
Despite news of the divorce filing in early January, Jordan’s image with Chicago didn’t appear to be dented. At his first appearance at the United Center in a Washington Wizards uniform Jan. 19, Jordan was greeted by an extended minutes-long standing ovation.