Boris Becker has confirmed his 35-year-old wife Lilian de Carvalho is pregnant with their first child together as the German tennis star prepares to become a father for the fifth time, aged 57.
On Sunday, Boris declared ‘the best is yet to come’ in an Instagram post that showed Lilian sweetly cradling her baby bump.
‘A tiny miracle is on the way…The best is yet to come,’ the Wimbledon icon captioned his post, as Boris is set to welcome his fifth child with a fourth woman.
The pregnancy announcement comes less than one year after the couple’s lavish wedding ceremony in Portofino, Italy, that Boris’s youngest children – 23-year-old daughter Anna and son, Amadeus, 15 – skipped.
Boris, who currently lives in Milan with Lilian, has been married twice before and has four children in total.
He welcomed his firstborn, a son named Noah Gabriel, now 30, in 1994 with his wife Barbara Feltus. Their second child, Elias Balthasar, was born in 1999.
The ex-couple separated after Boris had a one-night stand with Russian model Angela Ermakova during an encounter at London restaurant Nobu the same year.
Boris has said previously that he had put the encounter with Angela out of his mind, until she later made contact with him to say she was eight months pregnant.
In his 2023 Apple documentary ‘Boom! Boom! The World vs. Boris Becker’, Boris described how on that fateful night he left his mother and pregnant wife alone in his hotel room to celebrate the end of his playing career after a fourth round defeat in Wimbledon.
‘The first beer was opened right after the match,’ he recalled. ‘Then there was another beer. I wanted to go out with my coach, my physio and my [racket] stringer to celebrate.
‘I said to my wife, “Tomorrow I will be a husband and father but tonight, one last time, I want to be a tennis player.
“My wife was p****d off. I then had a long discussion with my mother on the balcony . . . and the last thing she said to me was, “Boris, just don’t do anything stupid.”‘
Later that evening, though, he went to Nobu where he met Angela in 1999.
Eight months after their encounter, he received a fax from Angela saying she was pregnant. Boris initially denied paternity, but DNA tests proved that the child Anna (who had inherited his red hair) was indeed his, and he made a financial settlement with her mother — while also funding an expensive divorce from Barbara.
In an interview for the film, Boris said he left Barbara after she kept bringing up his affair with Angela as he appeared to suggest their marriage broke down because she used his infidelity as a ‘joker card’ during arguments.
‘For months nobody knew yet [about the baby],’ he said. ‘But then every little thing we discussed, she came back with the joker card and said: ‘You shut the f*** up, because if the world knew what you had done, you are lost.’
Boris and Barbara’s divorce was finalised in 2001 after agreeing a £10 million settlement.
His second marriage to Dutch former model Lily Kerssenberg also ended acrimoniously when the pair split after nine years in 2018.
In 2023, Lily alleged that Boris ‘threw me and our son’ Amadeus out of the house in an interview with German media outlet Bild, adding: ‘I left him in 2018 and he can’t forgive me for that.’
‘When I left five years ago, he took away my house and car keys,’ the actress continued. ‘He threw me and our son out of the house. I didn’t have a penny in cash, didn’t know where to go. We spent the first night on a bench in a cafe.’
At the time, she also alleged that Boris ‘doesn’t pay a penny in child support’ and rarely saw his son but added ‘I believe that he loves’ him.
Last September, Boris and Lilian tied the knot in front of 150 guests during a lavish, three-day wedding in Portofino – but Anna and Amadeus skipped the celebration.
While Noah, 30, and Elias, 25, attended the festivities in Portofino as Boris’s best men, both Anna and Amadeus were missing from the wedding party.
It is not clear why the pair, who are seemingly now on good terms with their father, weren’t invited – especially after Boris publicly spoke of how ‘proud’ he is of both children.
Amadeus’ mother Lily expressed her disappointment at the time, telling German magazine Bunte: ‘His father didn’t tell him anything about [the wedding]…he’s wondering why he wasn’t invited.
‘When I approached Amadeus about it, he was completely taken by surprise. He knew nothing.’
This despite the fact that Boris marked Amadeus’ 14th birthday with a trip to Milan, earlier that year.
Lilly disclosed that Amadeus eventually received an invitation via WhatsApp, but he did not attend the wedding.
Meanwhile, Anna – who grew up between London and Monaco – revealed she discovered her tennis legend father was tying the knot after reading media reports.
The singer, who won Let’s Dance – the German version of the British series Strictly Come Dancing – has only spoken positively about her father in public.
Ahead of the Let’s Dance final, Boris recorded a message for his daughter, saying: ‘You’ve already conquered the hearts of the Germans.
‘You’ve taken them by storm. Your talent, your discipline, your performance and more – your personality, are amazing. And I couldn’t be prouder.’
After his 2024 wedding, Boris said Lilian – who works as a political risk manager – was the reason he ‘survived’ a jail sentence after he was convicted of insolvency crimes.
The former world number one spent eight months of a 30-month sentence for tax evasion in Wandsworth prison, before being released in 2022.
Describing Lilian – who remained by Boris’s side through the trial – Boris told Stern magazine their relationship is ‘perhaps the first partnership on equal terms’ while reflecting on his chequered past and tumultuous personal life.
‘No one is more important than the other,’ he said. ‘I need Lilian, and I hope she needs me too.’
