Boris Becker: This is how he got to know and love Lilian

Boris Becker (57) met his current wife Lilian de Carvalho Monteiro (35) in a difficult phase of life. The former tennis star writes in his new book “Inside: Win – Start – Losing – New” from September 10th): “It is April 2018. My life is anything but round: I have been insolvent for almost a year and recently separated from my second wife Sharlely.” In addition, health problems with ankles and knees came.

During this time he was in Frankfurt to celebrate his birthday with a good friend. “Suddenly this young woman stands, quite big. She doesn’t see me. Because she doesn’t know me.” Only the next day at a renewed encounter he introduced himself to the woman, whose parents from São Tomé, an island off the west coast of Africa, came and who was born in Italy. “She is very educated and intelligent and speaks five languages. She has her own career,” says Becker about Lilian, which he hits several meals in the circle of friends. At first she didn’t want to give him her phone number because she didn’t know where she wanted to spend her life yet. In addition, she made a few research on him: “She reads divorces, financial problems and scandals. That is all too heavy.”

It was only almost a year later, at dinner with friends, was it different. Becker remembers in “Inside”: “At some point she just looks at me and asks: ‘Who are you really?’ And then she asks another question that I don’t usually ask: ‘What do you like? That makes me pause. After almost a year he got her number after this conversation. This is followed by Lilian to Rio de Janeiro, followed by phone calls. “When she is back in Europe, we meet for lunch, and I think the ice breaks. Here we kiss here for the first time.”

Becker also reports on a joint trip to Venice and then adds the beginnings of his relationship: “We keep a little distance, Lilian and I, for the rest of the year 2019. She is still considering what she wants to do with her life, in which direction it should go.” In early 2020 she moved to London. “We’ll start again.” Slowly first, but then Covid came and things had accelerated. In 2021 the couple moved in and when the verdict against him in April 2022, he told her: “I love you, but I don’t ask for you to wait for me. And without hesitation, she looks at me and says: ‘What do you mean? We are a team, we do it together.'”

Boris Becker and Lilian de Carvalho Monteiro now live in Milan. In September 2024 they said yes in Portofino, Becker announced in July 2025 that Lilian was pregnant. The child is to be born in December, as he announced in a podcast.

In his book “Inside”, which he wrote with Tom Fordyce, Boris Becker reports in detail about his time in two British prisons. In April 2022, he was sentenced to 30 months in prison for the allegation of insolvency crimes. For around seven months of it he sat down in the prisons Wandsworth and Huntercombe. In his book, he tells about the bad time behind bars, but also about new friendships that he closed at the time. In flashbacks, he also illuminates his life and tennis career. Among other things, he reports on his relationship with Andre Agassi (55) and Michael Stich (56) and apart from the tennis court and describes in detail how he got into the problems that brought him into prison.