New Jersey- The first wife of New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey said yesterday she didn’t know her ex was gay until last week.

“He told me just before he went on TV,” Kari Schutz said in a phone interview from British Columbia.

Schutz described the call from her ex-husband as “difficult,” although she declined to give details. But asked if she had any idea of her husband’s sexual identity during their marriage, she said, “I never knew.”

The governor’s second wife, Dina Matos McGreevey, also didn’t learn her husband was gay until just days ago, sources said. One source said that McGreevey first told Dina about his affair with a man last week, but it wasn’t until Wednesday that he told her he was certain he was gay and was going to come out of the closet.

McGreevey took to the airwaves Thursday to say he had had an affair with a man he didn’t identify, and that he was resigning the governorship, effective Nov. 15.

Schutz said she and her ex-husband had “discussions” about a brewing scandal involving former McGreevey aide Golan Cipel, since named as the other man in the affair, when she and their daughter, Morag, visited less than two weeks ago. It was unclear whether the governor had insisted the allegations weren’t true at the time.

She and McGreevey have talked repeatedly since his bombshell announcement.

“We’ve been in touch with him,” Schutz said. “And we’re just wanting our privacy back, and we support him 100% and wish him well.”

“He’s a wonderful father,” she added, noting that they have stayed in close touch with each other and that he sees their 11-year-old daughter often.

“My main concern is for my daughter,” she said of the media maelstrom surrounding her family. But Shutz has nothing but good will toward her ex-husband.

“He’s been a wonderful governor, and that’s how people should remember him,” she said.

McGreevey met Schutz, a librarian, on a cruise in 1990. They married in Canada and moved into a condominium in Woodbridge, N.J., where McGreevey became mayor. Schutz wasn’t happy as a political wife and split for her native Canada in 1994 with Morag.

The divorce became final in 1997. Later, as he was running for governor, McGreevey took the unusual step of sealing the divorce records, with Schutz’s permission.