“After 21 years of marriage, I have made the most difficult decision of my life.”
Teddi Mellencamp is beating the media and paparazzi to the punch.
The 43-year-old former “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star took to her “Two Ts in a Pod” podcast on June 3 to hard-launch a new romance before the rumors and speculation could start.
The big reveal came just a few hours after Mellencamp received a text from her publicist.
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“Do you have a new boyfriend? And what are the details? I need his name, information, blah blah blah,” Mellencamp recalled of the text, which she says caught her by surprise.
Knowing that rumors were about to swirl, Mellencamp decided to get ahead of the speculation.
“Yeah, I'm dating somebody. He's very kind to me, he's taking good care of me. He's nice, he's not married, he doesn't have any kids. But he's also a private person,” she said of her new boyfriend.
“He’s a really sweet guy and that’s all I can really say about it,” she added on the June 3 episode.
After receiving the text from her publicist, Mellencamp gave her new man a heads up.
“My publicist reached out to me and said that there’s information, and so that means most likely there’s paparazzi pictures,” she wrote in the text.
Mellencamp said she didn’t know the pair were photographed at the time, but was aware of “multiple paparazzi” parked outside of her house that morning, following a day she spent with her boyfriend.
“I was getting my mail out and then I turned around and the guy was like sticking his camera outside,” Mellencamp recalled, adding that she thinks the paparazzi were trying to see if she was with her man.
The photo was ultimately shared by Daily Mail on June 2.
“I don't know why they thought today was going to be some big day, but I'm guessing it's because some pictures are going to come out,” she said.
Mellencamp chose not to reveal her boyfriend’s name to protect his identity.
Mellencamp says her estranged husband is aware of her boyfriend
Mellencamp’s hard-launch comes as she and her estranged husband, Edwin Arroyave, move forward with their divorce.
The couple, who share three kids — Slate, 12, Cruz, 10, and Dove, 5 — together, tied the knot in 2011 and were married for 13 years before splitting in October.
Mellencamp filed for divorce the following month, but the pair are in no rush to finalize it.
“Edwin’s been great,” Mellencamp said of Arroyave. “We’re not moving full-steam ahead. We’re living in two different houses. He’s been really kind to me. If I ask him to come to an appointment, he’ll be there.”
Nonetheless, Mellencamp said “there’s no big secret or scandal here” and Arroyave is aware that she’s dating.
The hard-launch also comes as Mellencamp continues to receive treatment for stage 4 cancer.
The reality TV star, who is also the daughter of iconic singer-songwriter John Mellencamp, announced that she was diagnosed with stage 2 melanoma in October 2022 following a routine skin check.
She had 11 melanomas removed by December of that year and six more in the two years since, per People.
Mellencamp’s condition worsened in February when doctors found several tumors in her brain.
On April 2, she announced that her cancer had reached stage 4 after the melanoma metastasized to her brain and lungs. She later revealed that doctors had given her a 50/50 shot at survival.
Three weeks later, she revealed that all of her stage 4 tumors have either “shrunk or disappeared.”
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“I have 6ish more weeks of immunotherapy and doctors believe I will be healed if everything stays on course,” she wrote in an Instagram caption at the time.
