‘Real Housewives of Salt Lake City’: Inside Mary Cosby’s Family Feud, Lawsuits, and Church Drama
Bravo released the first trailer for The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City and one cast member is already going viral: Mary Cosby.
Fans who wanted to learn more about the RHOSLC crew headed over to the network’s website to check out their bios. While Cosby’s marriage is what has everyone talking, there’s some family drama behind the scenes that stretched out for years.
‘RHOSLC’ Mary Cosby married a family member
You’ve probably heard the news that Mary Cosby married her step-grandfather, Bishop Robert Cosby. According to her Bravo bio, she inherited her family’s churches and financial fortune on the condition that she marry the man. They’ve been together for 20 years and share one child.
But there’s more. Her maiden name is Mary Martha Harris and according to a lengthy 1999 article in the Salt Lake Tribune, she wed Cosby in September 1998 when she was about 24.
In 1999, Cosby was a 45-year-old widower whose wife was 20 years his senior. Her name was Rosemary “Mama” Cosby and it’s her fortune that set off a major family conflict.
One of Rosemary Cosby’s daughters accused Robert Cosby of forgery, foul play
Rosemary Cosby was an affluent Pentecostal pastor who acquired millions of dollars’ worth of land, homes, churches, businesses, cars, jewelry, and other items. She founded her the Faith Temple Pentecostal Church in 1968, after moving her four children to Utah.
Per her obituary, after marrying Robert Cosby in 1975, they started other churches in other cities. She died in 1997 at age 65 and that’s when trouble began. Daughter Rosalind Cazares accused her stepfather of forging documents to claim property. Cazares asserted certain assets belonged solely to her mother.
Using the help of a forensic expert to examine the documents, she filed a civil suit against him and his church member/business manager. During all this, Cazares split from the family’s church and in a show of solidarity, half the congregation defected with her.
According to Deseret News, she also requested her mother’s body be exhumed for an autopsy, as she suspected Cosby had something to do with her death.
A Utah judge ordered the exhumation. The findings were revealed in 2000 that Rosemary Cosby died of natural causes at her home in Florida. The legal war raged on.
Cazares filed another lawsuit over the estate
In 2007, Cazares filed another suit against Cosby alleging that he mishandled the estate and denied her of her portion of her mother’s wealth.
She claimed he engaged in fraudulent activity and at one point, a jury awarded $1.2 million in damages to be paid to her through the estate. It is unclear whether she ever received the funds from Robert Cosby.
Mary Cosby’s complicated family history will probably play a role in the upcoming season of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, and fans are eager to find out how she’ll address it.
Will she limit her discussions to the show or will she take it to social media too? The newest addition to the franchise premieres on Nov. 11 on Bravo.
