Margaret Buckley married David Caruso at the lowest point of his career, lived through his fall and his return as the star of CSI: Miami, and then left both the marriage and the public eye behind. Since their divorce in 2007, almost nothing about her has surfaced.
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Who is Margaret Buckley?
She is the third wife of actor David Caruso, and she worked as a flight attendant before they met, with no career in entertainment. In a US Weekly profile from the late 1990s, Caruso said she did not watch television and had no idea who he was when they first met, and that she would be as comfortable in the White House as in a trailer park. Linda Fiorentino, who starred opposite him in the 1995 film Jade, told the same magazine that he finally seemed happy with her.
How she met David Caruso
The two became a couple in the mid 1990s, when Caruso’s career was in free fall. He had left NYPD Blue after his breakout first season, gambling that he could become a film star instead. The gamble did not work. His two 1995 movies, Kiss of Death and Jade, underperformed, and the studios’ interest in him cooled fast. Buckley married him in 1996, in the middle of that slide.
For the next several years the couple appeared together at premieres and industry events, including a CBS Upfront party in New York in 2003. Buckley herself gave no interviews and was rarely quoted.
The marriage and the move to Miami
In 2002, Caruso got the role that brought his career back, Lieutenant Horatio Caine on the new series CSI: Miami. The show was a hit, and its production drew the couple to Florida. A Cigar Aficionado profile described how the two fell for Miami while Caruso was filming there. They bought a condo with the idea of living in Florida part of the year, and before the marriage ended they opened an upscale clothing store called Steam in South Beach, which Caruso kept a stake in afterward.
The marriage had a harder side too. In December 2004, the Australian edition of Woman’s Day reported on Caruso’s drinking and his recovery, and on how Buckley had coped with it. They separated that year.
What the divorce settlement included
They had been married about eight years when they separated in 2004, and the divorce was finalized in January 2007. People magazine reported what she received.
- a payment of $2.7 million
- a share of Caruso’s residuals from CSI: Miami
- a 2004 Range Rover, along with furniture and other personal property
- her original name, Margaret Elizabeth Buckley, restored by the court
Caruso kept his homes in Florida and California.
Did Margaret Buckley and David Caruso have children?
They did not have any children together. Caruso’s three children are from other relationships, his oldest, Greta, with the actress Rachel Ticotin, and his two youngest with Liza Marquez, a partner he was with after the marriage.
Where is Margaret Buckley now?
After the divorce, Buckley left public life and has not come back. There is no record of her giving an interview or appearing in public since 2007, and she has never spoken about the marriage. No verified social media account in her name has been found, and no current photograph of her circulates. The last solid details about her come from the divorce itself, the settlement and the restored name. After that, the trail goes cold.
Clearing up the confusion
Because so little about Buckley is on the record, other accounts online often mix her up with the other women in Caruso’s life. A few points are worth keeping straight.
- Caruso’s oldest child, Greta, is the daughter of his second wife, Rachel Ticotin. Buckley and Caruso had no children.
- The long court fight over fraud and custody claims was with Liza Marquez, a girlfriend after the marriage, not with Buckley.
- Caruso has married three times, to Cheri Maugans in 1979, to Rachel Ticotin in 1984, and to Buckley in 1996. She was his last wife.
Buckley married Caruso when he was near the bottom and left when he was back on top, and through both she kept her distance from the attention. When the marriage ended, she took the settlement and her name and went quiet. Almost twenty years later, she still is.
