Aurora Culpo is offering more details on her short-lived romance with Bethenny Frankel’s ex-fiancé Paul Bernon.
“We were not meant for each other,” Culpo, 35, said during the Monday, May 5, episode of the “Casual Chaos” podcast. “He’s a nice guy and he’s [a] very responsible, caring type [of] person. At the time I thought, maybe, that was something that I wanted. But there really was never a huge spark.”
Culpo admitted she was “waiting” to feel something while dating Bernon, 46.
“I didn’t have that head over heels feeling, but I was like, ‘Oh, this is a nice prospect. I’ll give it a shot for a couple of months,’” Aurora added.
Bernon and Frankel, 54, were together from 2018 to 2024, getting engaged in 2021. Culpo, meanwhile, was previously married to Michael Bortone, with whom she shares two kids.
Bernon and Culpo were first connected when he apparently reached out to her team for a possible podcast collaboration. (Instagram gossip account DeuxMoi was first to report the news of Bernon and Culpo’s romance when they were spotted together in July 2024.)
However, Bernon and Culpo’s romance only lasted two months. Frankel broke the news of Bernon and Culpo’s split on her “Just B” podcast in July 2024.
“That was just interesting because she knew nothing about our relationship, except what I had said on my podcast, which was completely anonymous by the way, never even mentioned his name,” Culpo said during Monday’s podcast, speculating that Frankel was “butthurt” over Bernon’s new romance at the time.
“I would not listen to the podcast of my ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend. Do I want to hurt my own feelings? Why would I do that?” Culpo continued, noting that Bernon ended up being under “a lot of stress” due to the public’s fascination with their relationship.
“He really didn’t like being in the public eye in a negative way,” she claimed. “I think he kind of liked being in the public eye and if they were saying nice things.”
Culpo added that Bernon was the one who called things off, which she previously stated on a July 2024 episode of her “Barely Filtered” podcast.
“Honestly, I was kind of like, ‘Thank God,’” Culpo said of the split, claiming that Bernon used the podcast back-and-forth between her and Frankel as an excuse. “I didn’t want to be the one to have to break up with him, but I was not feeling it either.”
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