As the hotly-anticipated trailer for the forthcoming season of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills dropped, Kyle Richards—the franchise’s star—wasn’t on Twitter pouring over the internet’s range of reactions from home. No, she had a hot date with LAX.
On Wednesday afternoon, Richards was photographed in the arrivals area waiting for none other than rumored girlfriend, Morgan Wade. Now, I know friends pick each other up from the airport all the time, but no one except a lover would voluntarily navigate the arrivals area at LAX. The photos, caught by Backgrid, show Wade retrieving her luggage and making her way to her lady-in-waiting behind the wheel of a Range Rover.
There’s no gooey greeting between the two of them—in fact, this reunion looks as chilly as the ones hosted by Andy Cohen—but that’s no surprise. Whatever’s happening between these two has been consistently confounding since reports of their sudden companionship started swirling. The trailer, too, confirmed that not only will Wade appear in the season, but that Richards’ co-stars have also been questioning their closeness.
In one scene, Richards introduces Wade to an unspecified man and he asks how they met.“She stalked me,” Wade answers as Richards flashes her a wide-eyed look. In another, Richards is shown tattooing Wade’s arm with her initial as the former’s longtime friend and cast mate, Dorit Kemsley, poses this salient question: “You put the first letter of your name on her body...what is going on, Kyle?”
Later, when the group sits down to dinner and Richards is markedly missing, another cast mate, Garcelle Beauvais, asks, “Kyle—where is she?” Sutton Stracke—who looks to be the resident shit-stirrer of the group this season—deadpans: “in denial about something.”
All of the aforementioned is a very promising preview of what viewers have been seeing play out in the press for the last four-ish months. No storyline—not even Erika Jayne’s ludicrous Las Vegas “residency”—has captivated the masses quite like Richards’ curious friendship with Wade amidst the shocking separation from husband, Mauricio Umansky.
Since June—prior to Richards’ and Umansky’s split—the Bravo-sleuth side of TikTok began keeping a close watch on Richards’ posting patterns on social media, noting that she’d gone months without sharing pictures of her husband. Instead, she was posting pretty regularly about her new friendship with Wade—from joint gym sessions to the kind of selfies that one might take with someone they’re...pretty close with. It all started one year earlier, when in February 2022, Richards posted a photo with the country singer, writing that she’d “stalked” her on social media after listening to her music on a drive from Utah to Colorado. Richards captioned the post: “The most unlikely of friendship some may think but kinship knows no bounds.” Since then, scores of TikToks have now been made of Richards’ and Wade’s matching tattoo (a heart), matching silver bands, and their many public spottings—by both paparazzi and pedestrians—hanging out solo in Los Angeles, Nashville, and Aspen. Apparently, Richards is even producing and starring in a documentary about Wade’s life.
Meanwhile, Umansky—who’s currently competing on Dancing with the Stars—just contended to People that Bravo’s favorite couple “aren’t throwing in the towel” on their marriage.
Welp! The season premiere of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills cannot arrive soon enough.
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