Relationships

The Power of Reinvention: Caroline Stanbury and Sergio Carrallo Dissect How Their Relationship Has Changed Them

July 20, 2025

What happens when a 24-year-old ex-soccer player and a 43-year-old divorcée with three kids get together? A magical reinvention, or at least, that is true for Caroline Stanbury and Sergio Carrallo. The couple has made headlines for their 19-year age-gap relationship, but before all the media attention, they lived whole and separate lives.

Stanbury made a name for herself as a reality TV boss babe with stints on Ladies of London and Real Housewives of Dubai. At the same time, Carrallo played professional soccer for Real Madrid and the New York Cosmos for six years. After he retired, he attended the University of California, Irvine, and got his degree in digital marketing.

On a recent episode of Uncut and Unfiltered, the couple discusses who they were before they met and how finding each other became the catalyst for reinvention. If you need inspiration for your next pivot or are hoping to find love again, Stanbury and Carrallo’s story is sure to resonate. They share how finding love challenged their identities and gave them the second act they never expected but always needed.

Stanbury shares the journey from a public divorce

Stanbury has lived several lives—as a businesswoman, reality television star, party girl, and divorcée. She admits that she and Carrallo were very different people when they met, compared to who they are today.

At the same time as her divorce, Stanbury was also at the end of her time on reality television and leaving a business venture that she started with her ex-husband, Cem Habib. “Who you are when you are going through the end of a long-term marriage and who you become afterward is chalk and cheese,” Stanbury explains.

Reinvention in her 40s

Stanbury lost her sense of self during her divorce. “You have such an identity crisis,” she says. “My identity has been formed coming straight out of boarding school, then to a career, then straight to getting married.”

When she separated from her ex-husband, Stanbury was new to Dubai, and she didn’t have friends or a community there. “I had to start again in many ways,” she says. “That’s the power of reinvention.”

After the divorce, Stanbury dove into her work—filming reality TV and managing her businesses. “The hustle is what keeps me alive,” she says. “But I think that I am a lot softer now, and I know absolutely what I do and do not want in business.”

Carrallo’s life after soccer and age gap judgments

Stanbury never knew Carrallo during his soccer career. Carrallo has played the sport since he was a small child, and he recalls the pressures of playing. “I went through a lot with professional success since I was 14,” Carrallo explains. “It developed a personality that wasn’t my true self, and when I met Caroline, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to be or where I wanted to go.”

Carrallo doesn’t have any issues with having a wife who is more successful and older than he is. He says that meeting Stanbury propelled him forward in his career and gave him the direction he needed—the reinvention he had been seeking. “When I met you, your whole circle of friends underestimated me,” he recalls. “I had a really big challenge up against me at first, but I overcame it.”

Stanbury is Carrallo’s dream girl. “She was this little hot mami, and this fashionable girl,” he says. “Every young guy dreams about having a MILF. You don’t look at girls your own age, but you look at mommies because they are so hot.”

How falling in love catalyzes reinvention

Stanbury says that while she didn’t get divorced for Carallo, he did help her feel certain that she was on the right path. “You cemented that I didn’t want to go back to my old life, and that I wasn’t in my right life,” she says.

Before meeting Carrallo, Stanbury prided herself on being independent, and although she is still fine on her own, she has come to embrace the shift from “me” to “we.” “To be a team, we have to act like a team and work together,” Stanbury says. “In the world we live in today, it is the only way to be a successful couple.”

Carrallo agrees about the power of a couple acting as a team. “Most of the couples we know who are successful in their relationship and their lives, they work together, and they do family, travel, and business together,” he says.

Finding new love is a chance for a second act

Stanbury says there is power in being with the right person and in the right relationship. In her previous marriage, she recalls having a Range Rover, a staff, a driver, a cook, and fancy trips—but none of it mattered in the end. “None of those things made me happy,” she recalls. “They gave me a bloody headache.”

Carrallo encourages women who are unhappy in their marriages to take the leap and to embrace reinvention. “I believe so many couples are in the same position as you were, but they are afraid to take a leap and live,” he says.