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.
Boris, who married the political risk analyst in Italy last year, 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 different woman ahead of turning 60.
The pregnancy announcement comes less than one year after the couple’s lavish wedding ceremony in Portofino, Italy, as Boris hailed his wife as 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.’
As Boris readies for a new chapter with Lilian – 23 years his junior – it is world’s away from the man who had a one-night stand with a Russian model while his first wife Barbara Feltus was in labour.
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.
Their second child, Elias Balthasar, was born in 1999 – shortly before their landmark marriage ended due to Boris’ infidelity that led him to the back room at Nobu for an ill-advised liason encounter with Russian model Angela Ermakova.
As Boris’ marriage to Barbara imploded, London-based Angela launched a paternity suit against the retired tennis player, claiming he is the father of her then-nine-month-old daughter Anna.
Boris, then 33, publicly conceded he is the father of Anna, now 23, after a preliminary hearing at London’s High Court in 2001 as the former tennis ace promised ‘I will take care of little Anna’ in a statement issued by his spokesperson at the time.
His admission came after Boris accepted the results of a DNA test that proved their relationship after his lawyers suggested Anna was conceived by artificial insemination using the tennis star’s ‘stolen sperm’ after oral sex.
Boris detailed the brief romp with Angela in a broom cupboard at one of London’s chicest restaurants in the 2023 documentary called Boom! Boom! The World Vs Boris Becker.
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.
According to his version of events, 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, met Angela, and had that encounter in a back room of the restaurant.
Writing in his 2003 autobiography, Boris recalled how Angela gave him the ‘look of a the hunter that said “I want you”‘ before he followed her Then he went back to ‘his boys’, paid the bill for dinner and went home to Munich.
Eight months later 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.
Speaking during the documentary, Boris claimed that while Barbara initially tried to move past the ‘broom closet’ cheating scandal, she kept bringing up the fact that he had fathered a child with Angela during difficult moments.
‘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 bitter divorce was settled in 2001 after he agreed to pay her a lump sum of £10 million – significantly more than the provisions of their pre-nuptial agreement as Barbara retained full custody of their sons, Noah and Elias.
His second marriage to Dutch former model Lily Kerssenberg ended acrimoniously after nine years.
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.
However, Anna and Amadeus were both absent from their father’s Italian wedding to Lilian last year.
While Noah, 30, and Elias, 25, attended the festivities in Portofino as Boris’s best men, both Anna and Amadeus, 14, were missing from the wedding party.
It remains a mystery as to why the pair, who are seemingly now on good terms with their father, weren’t invited, especially after Becker 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 is despite the fact that earlier this year, Becker marked Amadeus’ 14th birthday with a trip to Milan, including a visit to the Natural History Museum, sightseeing and indoor skydiving.
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 – a reality TV competition modeled after the BBC’s 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.’
