We have a sad shocker from the world of reality television and business.
According to Us Weekly and other reliable celebrity gossip outlets, Bethenny Frankel and Paul Bernon have split after six years of dating.
The aforementioned tabloid, in its Monday evening report, quoted an anonymous friend of Frankel’s who said the relationship “just wasn’t working,” and who added that the romance ended two months ago.
“They’re so different — he’s an under-the-radar guy,” Us Weekly’s source explained.
The Skinnygirl mogul and former Real Housewives of New York City cast member began dating Bernon in October 2018 after meeting him on a dating app.
About a year later, Frankel and Bernon moved in together in Boston.
“I was very lucky when I walked in and saw him,” Frankel told People magazine in April 2021 about the couple’s very first date. “He had a sparkle. It came as promised – better than announced. He went overboard.”
Frankel, whose mother recently passed away, said on The Ellen Degeneres Show in October 2020 that she and Bernon had gone their separate ways.
“We had a great, great relationship,” she said at the time. “It doesn’t all have to end badly. Some things just don’t go on and that’s not a negative thing, it’s just life.”
Except Bethenny and Paul got back together about three months later.
And then got engaged in spring 2021.
Bernon popped the romantic question “on an island off Florida” in an “intimate” proposal, Frankel said at the time. “No makeup, no manicures, no ring photos. It was very simple and beautiful.”
Frankel added after agreeing to become Bernon’s wife:
“Paul is an absolutely wonderful person and it’s an exciting, fun time.”
It’s unclear exactly where things went wrong – but Frankel wasn’t always seen wearing her engagement ring and she told E! Last July there was news that there were no immediate plans for a wedding vows.
“I don’t want to set up a wedding,” the star said at the time.
“I love my life. I love my fiancé. He’s a great life partner and I don’t want to sign a contract with someone I love. I don’t want to plan a huge wedding for everyone else and I don’t want to do that either [do] What we want. I like doing what you want, not what society wants you to do.”
Frankel was previously married to Jason Hoppy from 2010 to 2012; The marriage ended in divorce and an ugly custody battle over daughter Brynn.
“It was literally the most traumatizing thing I will hopefully ever go through in my life,” Frankel said on an April episode of her podcast.
“I experienced a royal war. I questioned myself as a person, as a parent, because I was told so many times how horrible and disgusting and old and irrelevant and abused I was because I had no power to get out of it.”