Bethenny Frankel is an American reality television personality, entrepreneur and author. She was a contestant on the reality TV game show “The Apprentice: Martha Stewart,” in which she was the runner-up, in 2005. Take a look below for 25 more fun and interesting facts about Bethenny Frankel.
1. Frankel received wider notice after being cast on the Bravo reality television series “The Real Housewives of New York City:” she has starred in eight of its eleven seasons since it premiered in 2008.
2. She received her own spin-off series “Bethenny Ever After”, “Bethenny & Fredrik”, and the talk show “Bethenny”.
3. Outside of her work in reality television, Frankel is the founder of the Skinnygirl lifestyle brand and the author of four self-help books.
4. Her B Strong program entered into disaster relief efforts in 2017.
5. Frankel is the only child of Robert J. Frankel, a horse trainer, and Bernadette Birk, an interior designer.
6. Her father was Jewish and her mother was a Roman Catholic of Welsh descent.
7. Her father left her mother when Frankel was four years old. When she was five, her mother married horse trainer, John Parisella, who is of the Catholic faith.
8. Frankel describes her childhood as difficult.
9. Her mother, Frankel says, “was always drinking” and often argued violently with her stepfather.
10. Frankel said she moved many times and attended multiple schools before going to boarding school.
11. Frankel attended Catholic schools as a girl, and she graduated in 1988 from the Pine Crest School in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where she lived on campus.
12. She attended the Natural Gourmet Institute in New York City, and Boston University.
13. Bethenny worked as a production assistant on the set of “Saved by the Bell.”
14. Her B Strong program for women and their families in crisis works with the national disaster relief charity Delivering Good to provide people affected by the hurricanes of 2017 with gift cards, bank cards, and critical supplies.
15. Frankel and her team helped people who survived natural disasters in Puerto Rico, Houston, Mexico City.
16. Frankel posed nude for a PETA billboard in September 2009.
17. Frankel married entertainment industry executive Peter Sussman in 1996 and divorced him in 1997.
18. She married pharmaceutical sales executive Jason Hoppy in March 2010, and gave birth to a daughter, Bryn, in May of the same year.
19. Frankel separated from Hoppy in December 2012, and filed for divorce in January 2013. A custody agreement was finalized in June 2014, but property division negotiations were still ongoing. The divorce was finalized in July 2016, nearly four years after the couple separated.
20. In December 2017, she sued for full custody of their seven-year-old daughter.
21. Frankel has a severe fish allergy and was hospitalized in December 2018 after consuming soup which contained fish.
22. She was hospitalized at Newton-Wellesley Hospital in Newton, Massachusetts.
23. She has since demanded that airlines stop serving fish stating that it is a hazard to passengers with fish allergies to be in the presence of cooked seafood in an enclosed commercial airline jet.
24. Frankel created the Skinnygirl cocktail company in April 2011 and later sold the company to Fortune Brands’ Beam Global for an estimated $100 million.
25. In March 2009, Frankel’s book, “Naturally Thin: Unleash Your SkinnyGirl” and “Free Yourself from a Lifetime of Dieting,” was published and “The SkinnyGirl Dish: Easy Recipes for Your Naturally Thin Life,” was published in December.
