Real Housewives of New York City

Real Housewives of New York City is an American reality television program on the Bravo cable TV network. A spin-off of the Bravo series The Real Housewives of Orange County, it is the second city featured in The Real Housewives of... franchise. While in production for Season 1, the show was tentatively titled Manhattan Moms. Every episode of the Real Housewives of New York City begins with the trademark opener of the The Real Housewives of... franchise, which features each woman with her name on-screen and family behind her.

Season 1, which premiered on March 4, 2008, starred Bethenny Frankel, LuAnn de Lesseps, Alex McCord, Ramona Singer, and Jill Zarin. Contrary to the series title, the women featured were not all actually housewives. Frankel was unmarried and had her own business; McCord, Singer, and Zarin all had jobs outside the home; and Singer owned her own business.

Kelly Killoren Bensimon was added to the cast for Season 2, which premiered on February 17, 2009.

With the exception of Frankel, the cast appeared on Who Wants to be a Millionaire in February 2010 to promote the series' third season, which premiered on March 4, 2010. Event planner Jennifer Gilbert joined the cast but was not featured as one of the housewives in the show's trademark open. Her appearances were extremely limited and her own footage was never shown because she arguably did not create enough drama and was not involved with the central conflict of the show. However, Sonja Morgan joined the cast in the middle of Season 3 as The Real Housewives of New York City's seventh housewife. The Season 3 reunion show, filmed on May 26, 2010, aired as a three-part special.

Bethenny Frankel's spinoff, Bethenny Getting Married?, premeired on June 10, 2010 and features appearances by former housemates Ramona Singer and Alex McCord. On August 31, 2010, Frankel made an official announcement that she would not be returning to the Real Housewives of New York City series for its fourth season.

In September 2010, Season 4 began filming with Cindy Barshop as the series' newest "housewife". Filming finished, however, only two weeks before February 15, 2011 - the season's slated premiere date. Not wanting to miss anything, Bravo pushed the Season 4 premiere back until April 7, 2011 and instead premiered The Real Housewives of Miami on February 15, 2011.

Current Housewives

"To a certain group of people in New York, status is everything." (Season 1 - 3)

"I've always had opinions, but now people know it." (Season 4 - present)

Alex McCord, (born October 1, 1973; Washington, D.C.) has lived in New York City since 1996. She was raised in Kansas, Texas, and the U.S. Virgin Islands and attended Northwestern University but never graduated. McCord was a graphic designer for over nine years.

McCord is married to Simon van Kempen, who was the General Manager of Hotel Chandler in New York City throughout the first three seasons, but has since left to start his own social media business within the hotel sector. As of 2010, she and van Kempen reside in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. They have two boys together, Francois and Johan, who were named for Simon's late father, Francois Johan Walter van Kempen.

In March 2009, she was laid off from her job in visual merchandising for Limited Brands/Victoria’s Secret.

McCord and her husband have written a book together titled Little Kids, Big City, which was released in spring 2010.

LuAnn de Lesseps

Main article: LuAnn de Lesseps

(Season 1 - present)

"I never feel guilty about being privileged." (Season 1 - 3)

"I thought I had it good before, but I'm just getting started." (Season 4 - present)

LuAnn de Lesseps née Nadeau (born May 17, 1965 in Berlin CT, an industrial town in the center of the state) was born to a concrete manufacturer (whose Berlin, CT firm, Nadeau Concrete, is  still owned by two of her brothers), but she quickly wanted to leave her working class life behind. She formerly modeled with Wilhelmina Models and is an LPN. She is of Algonquin and French descent. and was the fourth wife of "Count" Alexandre de Lesseps, a descendant of Ferdinand de Lesseps of the Suez Canal family. They have two children, Victoria and Noel. De Lesseps and her husband were divorced in 2010 amid reports of infidelity and drug and alcohol abuse by both parties.

De Lesseps is listed as the author of a book released in 2009 titled Class With The Countess, although, as she admitted during the filming of Season 2 when Diane Reverand appeared on the show, Reverand actually wrote the book. In April 2010, de Lesseps released a music single titled "Money Can't Buy You Class". She released her second single, "Chic, C'est La Vie" in May 2010.

Jill Zarin

(Season 1 - present)

"I run with a fabulous circle of people." (Season 1 - 3)

"Good or bad I know who I am...and I own it." (Season 4 - present)

Jill Zarin (born 30 November 1963; Woodmere, New York (a NYC suburb and part of the affluent Five Towns of Long Island's South Shore in Nassau County) is married to Bobby Zarin, who owns Zarin Fabric Warehouse and Home Furnishings, a home furnishing and fabric store on Manhattan's Lower East Side started by his father. Zarin, who attended Simmons College, does marketing for her husband's store and holds a real estate license. She currently lives on the Upper East Side with her husband and daughter, Allyson, from a previous marriage.

The Zarins' summer home in the Hamptons, featured on the show, was sold in 2009.

Ramona Singer

(Season 1 - present)

"I like making my own money, I find that an aphrodisiac." (Season 1 - 3)

"If people can't handle the truth, it's really not my problem." (Season 4 - present)

Ramona Singer (born November 18, 1956 in Rhinebeck, NY, about 100 miles north of NYC) lives in Manhattan with her husband Mario and their teenage daughter, Avery. After graduating from the Fashion Institute of Technology, Singer began her career as a buyer for Macy's and then moved into the wholesale clothing business with French Connection and Calvin Klein. She is the owner of RMS Fashions, a company that purchases excess goods from clothing manufacturers and resells them to discount stores. (In the apparel industry, Ramona is known as a jobber - a middleman to whom manufacturers sell their surplus fabric.)

She developed her own line of jewelry, which is sold through the Home Shopping Network (HSN), and she markets the line herself. She also developed and launched a skin care line, TruRenewal, in 2009. Further, Season 4 indicates that Singer recently launched her own brand of Pinot grigio.

Kelly Killoren Bensimon

(Season 2 - present)

"I've created a great life and I love living it" (Season 2 - 3)

"I'm living the American dream one mistake at a time" (Season 4 - present)

Kelly Killoren Bensimon (born May 1, 1968; Rockford, IL) is a former model, equestrian, jewelry designer, and magazine editor. She has two daughters, Sea and Thaddeus "Teddy", whom she had with her ex-husband, photographer Gilles Bensimon.

She is the author of three books published by Assouline: In the Spirit of the Hamptons, American Style, and The Bikini Book (2005). She also has a jewelry line, which she has been selling for the last six years. She appears on many morning shows talking about fashion and style.

Sonja Morgan

(mid-Season 3 - present)

"I have a taste for luxury, and luxury has a taste for me." (Season 3 - present)

Sonja Morgan (born November 25, 1963 in Albany, NY as Sonja Tremont) is the ex-wife of John Morgan. John, 33 years her senior, is one of five children of Henry S. Morgan (a great-grandson of J. Pierpont Morgan) and Catherine Adams (a great-great-granddaughter of John Adams, the second President of the United States). Sonja and John have a daughter together. Prior to getting married, Sonja was hostess/phone receptionist at an Italian restaurant in New York City called San Pietro (located at Madison Ave. and 54th St.)

According to the New York Post, Morgan agreed to finance a motion picture in 2006 but backed out at the last minute because she had just been served with divorce papers. As a result, a federal jury in California awarded the production company $7.06 million in damages in September 2009.

According to the New York Daily News, Morgan filed for bankruptcy in November 2010 (while Season 4 was filming), claiming to be $19.8 million in debt.

Morgan is currently working on a screenplay that she describes as "a Candace Bushnell society novel."

Cindy Barshop

(Season 4 - present )

"I have everything I've ever wanted, and it's all on my own terms." (Season 4 - present)

Cindy Barshop is the owner of Completely Bare, a chain of hair-removal spas. She previously worked in telecommunications for IBM. She opened her first spa in New York City in 1998. A single mother, Barshop has 15-month-old twin girls, Jessie and Zoe, whom she chose to have on her own. She is close to her brother Howie, who also sometimes appears on the show. She is from Long Island, NY.

Former Housewives

Bethenny Frankel (born November 4, 1970; Port Washington, Long Island, NY, where she grew up), daughter of Bernadette Parisella and the late thoroughbred race horse trainer and horse racing hall-of-famer Robert Frankel, is a natural foods chef. She graduated from Pine Crest School (a high school in Boca Raton, Florida) and attended New York University (but did not graduate) and The Natural Gourmet Institute in New York. She created BethennyBakes, a company that offered a line of wheat, egg and dairy-free baked goods that was carried in hundreds of retail outlets. BethennyBakes ceased production in 2010 when Frankel launched the Skinnygirl brand, the flagship product of which is the Skinnygirl Margarita, a premixed drink lower in calories than a traditional margarita. On March 28, 2010, Frankel married Jason Hoppy at the Four Seasons Restaurant in New York City. She and Hoppy now star in Bravo TV's spinoff series, Bethenny Ever After..., which premiered on June 10, 2010. On May 8, 2010, Bethenny gave birth to a baby girl, Bryn, who weighed approximately 4 lbs, 13 ounces at birth.

She was a regular contributor to NBC's coverage of the 2009 Kentucky Derby and 2009 Preakness Stakes, and Bravo's coverage of the 2009 Kentucky Oaks. Before she appeared in The Real Housewives of New York City, Frankel starred in the 1994 movie Hollywood Hills 90028 and acted in the 1995 movie Wish Me Luck. In 2005, Frankel was a contestant and the first runner-up on The Apprentice: Martha Stewart.

In 2009, Frankel posed nude for animal rights group PETA's anti-fur campaign; her photo was featured on a billboard in Times Square.

Frankel is the author of Naturally Thin: Unleash Your Skinnygirl and Free Yourself from a Lifetime of Dieting (2009), a New York Times Best Seller in the Paperback Advice & Misc. List category. She has since authored The Skinnygirl Dish, The Skinnygirl Rules, and released an exercise DVD, Body by Bethenny. Frankel’s fourth book, A Place of Yes: 10 Rules for Getting Everything You Want Out of Life, was published on Touchstone March 22, 2011,  and entered the New York Times Best Seller List in the Hardcover Advice & Misc. List category on April 10, 2011.