We’ve got a sad shocker out of the world of reality television and business.
According to Us Weekly and other reliable celebrity gossip outlets, Bethenny Frankel and Paul Bernon have broken up after six years of dating.
The aforementioned tabloid cited an anonymous friend of Frankel’s in its Monday night report, someone who said the relationship “just wasn’t going to work” and who added that the romance ended two months ago.
“They are so different – he’s an under the radar kind of guy,” the Us Weekly 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 one year later, Frankel and Bernon moved in together in Boston.
“I was pretty lucky when I walked in and saw him,” Frankel told People Magazine in April 2021 of the pair’s very first date. “He had a twinkle. He came as advertised — better than advertised. He overshot the mark.”
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’ve had a great, great relationship,” she said back then. “Not everything has to end badly. Some things just don’t continue and it’s not negative, it’s just life.”
Except that Bethenny and Paul got back together about three months later.
And then got engaged in the spring of 2021.
Bernon popped the romantic question “on an island off of Florida” in an “intimate” proposal, Frankel shared at the time. “No makeup, no manicure, no ring photos. It was very simple and beautiful.”
Added Frankel after agreeing to become Bernon’s wife:
“Paul’s an absolutely beautiful person and it’s an exciting, fun time.”
It’s unclear exactly where things went wrong — but Frankel has not always been seen with her engagement ring on and she told E! News last July that there were no immediate plans to exchange vows.
“I don’t want to build a wedding,” the star said at the time.
“I love my life. I love my fiancé. He’s an amazing life partner and I don’t want to sign a contract with someone I love. I don’t want to plan a massive wedding for everybody else and not [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 union ended in a divorce and in 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 have been through a f–king war. I have questioned myself as a human, as a parent, because I was told so many times otherwise how terrible I was and disgusting and old and irrelevant and abused, because I had no power to get out of it.”
