Introduction
Julie Hart is the former wife of Bret Hart, the WWE Hall of Famer known as “The Hitman,” and the mother of his four children. Born Julie Smadu, she spent twenty years married to one of professional wrestling’s biggest stars, living through his rise from a regional wrestler in Calgary to a five-time WWE World Heavyweight Champion. After the divorce, she found her own voice with the 2013 memoir Hart Strings: My Life with Bret and the Hart Family, drawn from the journals she kept throughout the marriage.
One important clarification: Julie Hart is not AEW wrestler Julia Hart. The wrestler, born Julia Rose Hart on November 8, 2001, in Cambridge, Minnesota, is an entirely different person with no connection to the Hart wrestling family. The similar names have confused wrestling fans, but Julie Hart, born March 25, 1960, was never a wrestler. She was the woman behind the scenes during the most turbulent era of Bret Hart’s career.
Quick Bio
| Full Name | Julie Hart (née Julie Smadu) |
| Born | March 25, 1960 |
| Birthplace | Lestock, Saskatchewan, Canada |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Spouse (ex) | Bret Hart (married July 8, 1982; divorced June 24, 2002) |
| Children | Jade Michelle Hart, Dallas Jeffery Hart, Alexandra Sabina “Beans” Hart, Blade Colton Hart |
| Known For | Memoir “Hart Strings: My Life with Bret and the Hart Family”; matriarch of the Hart wrestling family; the documentary “Wrestling with Shadows” |
| Net Worth | Not publicly disclosed |
| Residence | Calgary, Alberta, Canada |
Early Life and Saskatchewan Roots
Julie Hart was born Julie Smadu on March 25, 1960, and grew up in Lestock, Saskatchewan, a small prairie town far removed from professional wrestling. In interviews about her memoir, she has spoken openly about a rough childhood, an experience she later said motivated her to write the book for women who had endured similar struggles.
The Smadu family already had a wrestling connection before Julie met Bret. Her sister Michelle Smadu married Tom Billington, better known to fans as the Dynamite Kid, one of the most celebrated wrestlers of his era. So Julie was stepping into a world she had already glimpsed from the outside.
Meeting Bret Hart and a Teenage Romance
Julie met Bret Hart when she was still a teenager, long before he became a global wrestling icon. He was a young wrestler from Calgary working for his father’s Stampede Wrestling promotion, and their courtship unfolded around small-town Canadian wrestling cards. Julie has said she never particularly wanted to get married at that stage of life, but Bret talked her into it.
The couple married on July 8, 1982, in an elopement that reflected how young and hurried everything felt. Julie discovered she was pregnant with their first child around that time, and the couple kept the pregnancy secret for the first few months.
Marriage and Life as a Wrestler’s Wife
Being married to Bret Hart meant living a life Julie has described as “magnified” in every way. The houses were big, the cars were big, and nothing felt normal by ordinary standards. As Bret rose through the WWF ranks, becoming one half of the Hart Foundation and later a singles superstar, Julie held down the home front in Calgary while Bret spent most of the year on the road.
Julie has said she truly grasped the reality of the wrestling business when Bret first went to Japan, understanding that the road was not a temporary phase but the permanent shape of their life. Bret had once told her he would retire at twenty-five, and she and the children clung to that hope for years. It never happened, and the long separations wore heavily on them.
Motherhood and the Four Hart Children
Julie Hart is the mother of four children with Bret Hart, and she has always described them as the greatest blessing of the marriage. Jade Michelle Hart arrived first, born March 31, 1983, followed by Dallas Jeffery Hart on August 11, 1984, Alexandra Sabina Hart on May 17, 1988, and Blade Colton Hart on June 5, 1990. Alexandra, nicknamed “Beans,” is the daughter through whom Julie later became a grandmother.
Raising four children while their father toured the world made Julie a single parent in all but name for much of the year. She has described doing “a lot of normal family things” with the children to distract from their dad being away. Bret honored his children with four hearts embroidered on the right thigh of his wrestling tights, each one symbolizing a child.
Wrestling with Shadows and the Montreal Era
Julie appeared in the acclaimed 1997 documentary Wrestling with Shadows, which followed Bret Hart through the most dramatic period of his career. Filmed during 1997 and released in 1998, it captured the fallout of the Montreal Screwjob, the infamous Survivor Series incident in which Bret lost the WWF Championship to Shawn Michaels under circumstances he had not agreed to.
The Montreal era was the beginning of the end for the marriage as well. Bret left for WCW, and Julie was present at the heart of the family turmoil. For a woman who had lived the reality behind the curtain for fifteen years, the documentary offered fans their clearest look at who she was, not as an on-air character, since she never had one, but as the wife holding a family together.
Separation and Divorce
Bret and Julie separated in May 1998, after several years of strain. Over the next four years there were brief reunions, but the two had grown too far apart. “I think it was the right thing to do,” Julie later said. “We both came to a fork in the road and no longer had it in us to walk with each other in the same direction.”
The divorce was finalized on June 24, 2002, under extraordinary circumstances, just hours before Bret suffered a devastating stroke. Bret went on to marry twice more, wedding Cinzia Rota in 2004, a marriage that ended in 2007, and then Stephanie Washington in 2010. Julie, meanwhile, chose to tell her own side of the story.
Hart Strings: Telling Her Own Story
In 2013, Julie Hart published her memoir, Hart Strings: My Life with Bret and the Hart Family, through Tightrope Books of Barrie, Ontario. She had been working on the book on and off since 1999, writing it from the journals she kept throughout her marriage. The 155-page memoir begins with her teen years and early romance with Bret, follows the couple through marriage, children, and divorce, and closes with her growing role as one of the new matriarchs of the Hart family.
Julie was candid about why she wrote it. She intended the book for women like her, women who had lived through rough childhoods, adultery, and divorce, and she was surprised by how many men showed up at her signings saying her story mirrored theirs. She also addressed Bret’s own 2007 autobiography, saying it never explained her or gave context for who she had become in his telling. The project, she said, had been extremely cathartic.
A Matriarch of the Hart Family
Even after the divorce, Julie Hart has remained a central figure in the Hart family, one of its recognized matriarchs. The Hart family, founded by promoter Stu Hart and his wife Helen, included twelve children, many of whom became wrestlers or married wrestlers, and its tragedies, including the death of Owen Hart in 1999, have been widely documented. Through it all, Julie’s branch of the family endured.
Among her later projects was a planned virtual museum paying tribute to Stu Hart, the family patriarch, reflecting her continued investment in preserving the family’s legacy. She has also been a frequent contributor to wrestling radio shows and blogs, staying in touch with the fans she built up over the years, no small feat for someone who was never an on-air WWE character.
Life in Calgary Today
Julie Hart lives in Calgary, Alberta, where she has built a life beyond the wrestling spotlight. According to her book’s author biography, she served as the overseas coordinator and operations specialist for the For the Love of Children Society of Alberta, a charity role she held for years alongside her writing. The same biography proudly lists her as the grandmother of Kyra.
She keeps a lower profile than many figures connected to the wrestling world, but she has never disappeared from it entirely. Her interviews about Hart Strings gave fans a rare, unfiltered look at life inside the Hart family from someone who lived it without ever stepping into the ring. She remains a figure of quiet resilience.
Conclusion
Julie Hart’s life is the story of an ordinary woman from Saskatchewan who was pulled into one of the most extraordinary families in sports entertainment. From a teenage romance in the Canadian Prairies to twenty years of marriage to Bret Hart, from raising four children alone while their father toured the world to writing the memoir that finally gave her a voice, her journey has been defined by endurance and honesty.
Today, Julie Hart stands as one of the matriarchs of the Hart wrestling family, a mother, grandmother, author, and charity worker living in Calgary. Her memoir Hart Strings ensures that her side of one of wrestling’s most famous marriages will not be forgotten. Behind every wrestling legend is a real family with real struggles, and Julie Hart has never been afraid to share hers.