“Real Housewives of New York” newbie Hailey Glassman is denying rumors she broke up Jon and Kate Gosselin’s marriage.
During Tuesday’s episode of the Bravo show, Glassman told her castmate Jessel Taank that she and Jon began their relationship after he had separated from Kate, but the news hadn’t become public yet so it looked like a cheating scandal.
“We were on my dad’s yacht, and someone got a photo of us, and then it was on TMZ, and they were like, ‘Jon with mystery woman, and plastic surgeon’s daughter,’” Hailey recalled.
“So it became this whole, like, ‘Home-wrecking Hailey, she ruined a family of eight.’”
“That was never the story,” she insisted, adding that the tabloids at the time “only care about salacious lies.”
According to Glassman, 39, she and Jon, 49, met when her father performed a “tummy tuck” on Kate after she gave birth to their sextuplets, and from there Jon and her parents became “family friends.”
When Jon and Kate separated, he moved into her parents’ house. Glassman noted that happened around the time she came home from college, and the two developed a close friendship that turned romantic.
In her confessional, Glassman explained that the media’s portrayal of her and Jon’s relationship deeply affected her and still impacts her life today.
“The media was just destroying me, and at 22 you don’t know who you are,” she said. “It’s almost like if you could rewind your life in time and pinpoint that one moment where a piece of you died but there was no funeral for you. That whole ordeal ruined my life.”
Hailey told Jessel that, at the time, tabloids “invaded” Indiana University, the school she attended, and asked people to give them a “juicy story” on her in exchange for $100.
She also said the media frenzy was why she and Jon, who dated from June 2009 to October 2009, ultimately broke up.
“I was just so beaten down,” she admitted.
Jon and Kate wed in 1999 and rose to fame on TLC’s “Jon & Kate Plus 8,” which followed the couple and their eight children. The show aired from 2007 to 2009.
The former couple announced their divorce in June 2009 during an episode of the TLC series.
After their split, Kate continued starring on the renamed “Kate Plus 8” series from 2010 to 2017.
The exes — who share twins Madelyn and Cara, 25, and sextuplets Aaden, Joel, Collin, Leah, Hannah and Alexis, 22 — are not on speaking terms.
New episodes of “RHONY” air Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on Bravo
