By the time she turned 40, 60 Minutes star Liz Hayes wasnโt just a household name, she also had three failed marriages behind her.
Now, the TV host โ whose autobiography Iโm Liz Hayes: A Memoir is out this week โ is finally opening up about her tumultuous relationship history.

โIt was ugly, it was unpleasant,โ Liz says of the negative attention she received.
(Credit: Getty)โIt was a crap time. Letโs face it, these things are not great. And itโs magnified. It becomes bigger than Ben Hur,โ says the star, who married her first husband, builder Brian Hayes, in the late โ70s when she was just 21.
They split in the mid-โ80s around the time she scored the gig as co-host on the Today show in 1986.
โYouโre looking at yourself. Youโre reading about yourself. Youโre noting that the view of you is pretty grim, so you come away thinking I am pretty grim, Iโm a bit of a failure on that front.โ
Liz was married to advertising millionaire John Singleton for less than a year in 1991, and a three-year marriage to Sydney doctor Stephen Coogan followed. That ended in 1997.
But her fourth union โ with former 60 Minutes soundman Ben Crane โ is the one that stuck and the pair have been together for more than two decades.

Her marriage to entrepreneur John was short-lived.
(Credit: Supplied)โYou could go knock on everybodyโs door and say, โWell, can I give you a bit of backstory?โ You canโt do that, so you just have to accept that thatโs the deal. But frankly, itโs a bit soul-destroying to have seemingly the world telling you, โYep, youโre a dud,'โ the 67-year-old adds of the interest in her rocky relationship history.
Throughout it all, the TV host kept her first husbandโs last name. But she reveals sheโs battled an identity crisis over the years.
โI grieve Beth Ryan, because I quite like Beth Ryan. Liz Hayes is who Iโve become. I was born Elizabeth Ryan,โ says the veteran journalist, who was born to dairy farmers in the regional NSW town of Taree.
โWhen I hear someone say, โHi, Beth,โ I know theyโre in my soul. When I realised, oh, Iโm now Liz Hayesโฆ thatโs a very odd moment. Itโs peculiar.โ
โWriting this book and writing โBeth Ryanโ, I hear my dad, my brothersโฆ Iโm not Liz Hayes. To this day Iโm Beth. It was only when reading the book that I went back and realised how big a deal it was to let go of that,โ she says.
Itโs a rare show of candidness from Liz, who has closely guarded her private life, in large part due to a terrifying experience with a man who stalked her for 25 years.
โI just had to change everything I did,โ says Liz of learning to live with the threat after court orders did nothing to deter him.