‘RHOBH’: Kyle Richards and Kathy Hilton Weren’t the Only Family Members Feuding — So Were Their Husbands
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
- Kyle Richards and Kathy Hilton had a rocky relationship for the better part of a decade.
- The RHOBH star’s husbands Mauricio Umansky and Rick Hilton were also feuding.
- Where do they all stand today?
Kyle Richards and Kathy Hilton were at odds for years before season 11 of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. The two sisters had a rocky relationship for the better part of a decade. But they were eventually able to patch things up. And Kathy finally joined RHOBH as a “friend.” Kyle and Kathy’s fall out was pretty common knowledge among Bravo fans. But they weren’t the only family members feuding — so were their husbands.
Kyle Richards brought Kathy Hilton to tears during season 1 of ‘RHOBH’
Kathy points to the end of season 1 of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills — way back in 2010– as the beginning of her feud with Kyle. That’s when Kyle outed their other sister Kim Richards as an alcoholic during a tense limo fight, and the episode brought Kathy and her daughter Paris Hilton to tears.
“Paris and I watched that. We broke down,” she recalled on SiriusXM’s Lunch With Bruce podcast. “You know when you cry and you’re shaking and your lip starts to quiver and ‘my mommy’s not there and there’s no one’ — it’s like, I felt helpless and alone. Paris was crying too.”
The TV show ‘American Woman’ made the sisters’ relationship worse
Kathy and Kyle’s relationship took another turn for the worse in 2015 when Kyle started developing the TV show American Woman. It was loosely inspired by their late mother, Kathleen (Big Kathy) Richards, and it only lasted one season. But Kathy wasn’t a fan of the idea, and she didn’t want Kyle spilling family secrets.
After American Woman aired in 2018, Kyle admitted during the RHOBH season 8 reunion that she and Kathy hadn’t talked in months.
“[My relationship with Kathy] is not great,” Kyle said. “I told her all the time, I said, ‘I’m not sharing your stories or Kim‘s — these are my own stories.’ And not only that, it’s a fictionalized version of our life, and our mom being a single mom in the ’70s is the jumping-off point.”
Kyle Richards and Kathy Hilton’s husbands were also feuding
Kyle and Kathy didn’t have much of a relationship for years, but they weren’t the only members of the family who were feuding. Kathy’s husband Rick Hilton and Kyle’s husband Mauricio Umansky had a business falling out when Mauricio left Rick’s Hilton & Hyland real estate company.
Mauricio worked for Rick for more than a decade before he ventured out on his own and opened the luxury real estate firm The Agency.
“My husband for years worked for my brother-in-law. Then he went off on his own like people do,” Kyle explained during a 2018 episode of RHOBH. “That doesn’t always work well in the family dynamic, and it can complicate things. I love my sisters a lot. It’s very complicated.”
The ‘RHOBH’ stars and their husbands finally made up
After the sisters and their spouses had a lengthy estrangement, they finally started to work things out a couple of years ago. Mauricio told Inman in 2019 that at the end of the day, “time heals everything.”
“We’re good. We’ve made up, we’re family,” Mauricio said. “The families have made up. We’ve been good for over a year. We were definitely in a fight for a while. And it was real. But the families have made up and it was fantastic. We’ve been good for solidly over a year.”
Kathy Hilton says her feud with Kyle Richards would have never happened if their mom was still alive
Kathy told Variety earlier this year that she and Kyle have had their ups and downs over the years. But she doesn’t think their feud would have happened if their mom “was still here.”
“We wouldn’t have fallen out. It was frustrating because I think I could’ve had a platform if I wanted one, but I chose to keep silent,” Kathy explained.
“We started to put the pieces back together a couple years ago. I had a little birthday dinner for her here at the house. I started to see what I was missing out on with my nieces. Nothing should ever come between sisters. It was heartbreaking to me, and my husband could see that.”
Part four of the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills season 11 reunion airs Wednesday, November 3 on Bravo.
