NASHVILLE — Former Vice President Al Gore and his wife, Tipper, are separating after 40 years of marriage.
According to an e-mail circulated among the couple’s friends and obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday, the Gores said it was “a mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together following a process of long and careful consideration.”
Gore spokesman Kalee Kreider confirmed the statement came from the Gores, but declined to comment further.
The couple famously exchanged a long kiss during the 2000 Democratic presidential convention.
Al Gore lost the 2000 presidential election to Republican George W. Bush. He has since campaigned worldwide to draw attention to climate change, which in 2007 led to a Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar for the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”
Tipper Gore was a co-founder in 1985 of the Parents Music Resource Center, which pushed for parental warning labels on music with violent or sexually explicit lyrics. The group drew the ire of musicians ranging from Dee Snider of Twisted Sister to Frank Zappa, who said warning labels were unnecessary and a danger to freedom.
The Gore’s have four adult children, Karenna, Kristin, Sarah and Albert III.