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Gretchen Rossi is looking back on her return to The Real Housewives of Orange County, along with the rest of the cast.
As the ladies shared their thoughts on Gretchen’s relationship with Slade Smiley, 51, and her ongoing drama with Tamra Judge, 57, Gretchen, 46, revealed her thoughts going into filming on season 19, explained how it felt getting reacclimated with the cast, and detailed why she and Slade haven’t yet wed, despite getting engaged over 12 years ago.
“I thought it was going to be super nervous or super anxious, but I don’t think I was,” Gretchen admitted on the August 24 episode of the RHOC: After Show. “It didn’t feel like it’d been 12 years. And what’s interesting about that is when you think about it, I was like, ‘It’s really been 12 years?’ I felt like it’s like riding a bike. Like, I feel like you get right back into it. And I was surprised.”
After Shannon Beador, 61, Heather Dubrow, 56, and Emily Simpson, 49, agreed that Gretchen’s addition to the season was exciting, with the latter applauding her for working “really hard to be friends with everyone,” Tamra complained about how Gretchen frequently reached out to new housewives joining the show to “warn” them about her.
Tamra then noted that while she hoped to start fresh with Gretchen, that wasn’t an option.
“I don’t really like to go backwards. I wanna go forward, and especially stuff from so long ago … There’s been apologies. There’s been moving on. But she just would not let things go,” Tamra stated. “If she would’ve just came back and like, ‘Let’s start over. I know we’re not the best of friends. Let’s see what happens.’ Like I said the very first time I met her, ‘Let’s move forward and maybe we can find something new to fight about.’”
Reflecting on their back and forth throughout season 19, Heather said she was saddened by their dynamic.
“It was very hard for me, honestly, to watch Tamra and Gretchen,” she shared. “I know I said this a lot, but when I came on the scene, they became friends. So I knew them as friends. We laughed a lot together. We traveled together. We were silly. We did all those things.”
According to Heather, things changed after Gretchen proposed to Slade, which many felt was solely for the show.
“Obviously, [they’re] meant to be together. They’re very close,” Heather revealed of the couple. “They’ve lasted a very long time. They seem to have a really nice family unit … [And they] pretty much call each other husband and wife.”
“For everyone to say that Slade had an ulterior motive to be with her, they were together for 16 years,” Shannon agreed.
Also on the RHOC: After Show, Gretchen addressed her marital status with Slade.
“I already feel [that] we’re married. We’ve been together for 16 years. We have a child together, and then … 2022, New Year’s Eve, we got married with an ordained pastor,” she revealed. “It was between him and me and God. We wanted to know that we had that for ourselves and for our daughter. Skylar was there, and it was a really special moment.”
When it comes to making things official, however, Gretchen said she doesn’t “feel like [she needs] to.”
“I think there’s something to be said for having pictures and then Sky getting to see that one day when she’s older, like, ‘Oh, this is when mommy and daddy got married,’ that sort of thing. So I love the whole concept behind having those memories behind it, but do I feel like this need of like, ‘Oh, I have to get married in that sense?’ No,” she confirmed.
The Real Housewives of Orange County season 19 airs Thursdays at 8/7c on Bravo.
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