HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — During the midst of her alleged affair with Tiger Woods, New Yorker Cori Rist said she was pretty certain that she wasn't the only one sleeping with the PGA star.
"I would wake up sometimes in the night in hotels with him and hear him text messaging," said the 31-year-old Rist in her first major interview on Monday's Today Show. "I'd lay there and realized he would be having a conversation, so I suspected there were others."
"I don't know how he had the time to have so many women in his life," she added.
Rist said she first met Woods at a New York City nightclub in June 2006 after a member of his party introduced them.
"A guy just approached me and said, 'Tiger Woods would like to meet you, and would you like to join us for a drink?' " she recalled. "At the time there was nowhere else to sit, so we went over. He immediately told me a joke, broke the ice. It was very comfortable. He was funny, polite, and that just started the evening."
From there, Rist claims they regularly got together at private homes and hotels whenever Woods was in New York. But one day she decided to end the relationship after seeing a picture of the golfer's wife, Elin, and their new daughter, Sam.
"I decided that I didn't want to be part of it anymore, and I broke things off with him six months later after I met him," she told the NBC morning show.
However, she claims Woods wouldn't be denied.
"He kept pursuing me for the next two and a half years, and we saw each other, but less often," explained Rist. "During the first six months, I'd see him twice a month."
According to Rist, Woods often spoke about how his marriage on the rocks.
"I understood that things were very difficult at home, not what we thought they were on TV," she said. "According to him, things were rough and they were going to separate. He said, 'We're on the outs,' but she was pregnant, and they had to get through that."
Rist, a single mother to a 7-year-old son, said she wanted to speak out to defend her image after being accused of being a high-priced escort in the media. She admitted that the fallout from the alleged affair has made things difficult on her son, but also said she was sorry to have hurt the golfer's wife.
"I'm sorry for her pain. I hate that I'm a part of it," she said. "I had no idea it would be like this. I can only imagine the pain she's feeling now, and I'm sorry."
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