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Heather Gay revealed the real reason she left Mormonism, and shared if she’s considering marriage with boyfriend Tripp. The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star also addressed how her castmates treated him.
In the new season, Heather shared that she and Tripp began dating again last year – nine years after their past fling. Throughout the show, Heather has been open about how she left Mormonism after getting divorced from her husband, Frank William “Billy” Gay III.
On the Two Percent podcast, Heather shared the real reason she left the church.
“What was hard for people to understand when I left the church is that it wasn’t like I wanted to drink or I wanted to sleep around or I wanted to be on Housewives and be famous,” she said. “I mean, I did want to do all of those things…”
“But the bigger thing was I finally wanted to publicly say, ‘I no longer align with this faith,'” she explained. “And just saying that out loud publicly or even to my children or to my family was really the blowing up of my life.”
In an interview with Us Magazine, Heather addressed if she’s considering marriage.
“I mean, my romantic heart entertains it every time I’m with Tripp, but I don’t think I’ll ever get married again,” she said. “I don’t want to, and marriage did not work out for me, and I just don’t see it as something I need.”
“It was really important to me that I got … all of my daughter’s approval. It was, like, a deal breaker,” said Heather of their romance in general. “So, [Georgia] was grilling him, and I was like, ‘Please go easy, don’t ask a question that I can’t recover from, you know, help a girl out here!’ But it’s the first time they’ve ever seen me with a man, so it made sense to give him the third degree.”
She said Georgia, her middle child, was “hardest” on him at first.
“They’re the closest now, I think of all the kids,” said Heather. “He’s helping her move to L.A., he’s putting together all of her furniture, so they’ve come full circle.”
“[We] definitely had to rebuild trust,” said Heather, alluding to their first fling, when she caught him messaging other women. “But also I kind of just went into it, like, a lot less to lose now that it was just me. … Being an empty nester created space … [to] throw caution to the wind and just love for love’s sake. … I just felt, like, if he breaks my heart, it won’t affect my family. I’ll just be, and I think I can recover from that.”
Heather said Tripp was “worth the risk” – and she shared how her co-stars treated him.
“I really felt like [my castmates] were so cool to Tripp and kind and didn’t give me a hard time and even Lisa [Barlow] at one point said, ‘I could go hard on you right now, but I’m not going to,’” said Heather. “I think … maybe they sensed how vulnerable it was for me to do my relationship on camera and live it out, and so, I felt like everybody was, kind of, rooting for me this year. I felt a lot of support, and I felt like the friendships really deepened. It was a fun season.”