Heidi Klum's Son Henry Turns 21: You Waited So Long

Heidi Klum’s son Henry turned 21 on Saturday, September 12, and for his birthday he got a red Ferrari F430. The car arrived as the payoff on a bet the boy made with his stepfather, Tom Kaulic, seven years earlier.

A bet seven years in the making

The bet was struck around Christmas, while Henry and Kaulic were playing Mario Kart, the way families often do over the holidays. The terms were simple and, as it turned out, long term. If Henry lost the race, he would go three months without touching a video game and would have to paint a picture of himself driving a car. If he won, Kaulic would buy him a Ferrari the day he turned 21. Henry won the race, and from that point on, while he was still a teenager, he knew a birthday gift few parents ever promise was waiting for him.

Henry himself laid out the terms of the bet in a video from his teenage years, cited by Yahoo.

“It’s happening on Christmas, and if I lose Mario Kart, then I can’t play video games for three months, and I have to do a painting of me driving. But if I win, then Tom has to give me a Ferrari when I’m 21.”

That deal held until Saturday, when Henry actually turned 21.

The car sat in the garage for a year

Kaulic bought the Ferrari at a car show the previous year and kept it hidden in the garage the whole time, waiting for the right moment to make good on his promise. Heidi Klum made a point of noting that her husband had kept the word he gave Henry seven years earlier.

Klum filmed the moment of the gift and shared it on her Instagram account. The clip shows Henry walking out of the house together with Kaulic, while his mother catches his reaction on camera the instant he spots the new car.

“I can’t believe that time has come. You waited so many years,” Klum said in the video.

Henry’s reaction to the sight of the red Ferrari was short and genuine.

“Oh my God! Jesus Christ. I don’t even know what to say,” Henry said as he walked around the car.

Two posts on Instagram

For the birthday, Klum shared two separate posts. The first shows the handover of the car itself, with Henry’s reaction in the moment he realizes what is parked in front of the house. In the second, she shared an older clip of Henry from his teenage years, in which her son, much younger at the time, explains on camera how the bet came about in the first place and under what terms it stood. Together, one fresh and one pulled from the archive, the two posts round out the whole story, from the deal to its payoff.

Klum and Kaulic married for the second time in 2019. A source close to the couple has said in the past that their relationship was easy from the start, since Kaulic accepted her previous partners, while Klum made clear that her role as a mother always came first.

Henry is Heidi Klum’s oldest son. A bet made on camera before Christmas turned into a gift that spent a year locked away in a garage, until Saturday morning brought both a birthday and a set of keys. For Klum, it was also a chance to show publicly just how long the family had kept the secret, since even Henry himself, as the video shows, had no idea the car had been that close the whole time.