It wasn’t the most ideal meetup the first time Tarek El Moussa‘s ex-wife, Christina Anstead, met his new girlfriend, Heather Rae Young. El Moussa, 38, revealed in a recent interview that he didn’t warn Anstead, 36, before introducing her to Young, 31.
“I was like, ‘Oh, I’m coming over to see the kids. By the way, my girlfriend is coming. See you in five!’” the Flip or Flop star told Michael Strahan, Sara Haines and Keke Palmer on Tuesday during GMA3: Strahan, Sara and Keke.
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Not only did he leave Anstead in the dark, but El Moussa admitted that he didn’t warn Young she was about to meet the mother of his two children.
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“That’s literally how it went down,” the HGTV personality said. “I looked at Heather and I was like, ‘Are you ready?’ and she was like, ‘Well, we’re going to go see the kids, and my ex-wife is there.’ And she goes, ‘What do you mean?’ And I’m like, ‘No. We’re going right now.’ She’s like, ‘Right now. Right now?’ I was like, ‘Right now. Right now.’ So that’s how they met.”
But in the end, everything went well and the two women bonded over a shared interest in health. “They get along great,” El Moussa said. “They both eat that healthy, hippy food. That weird juice. They do that weird hiking stuff. You know that weird stuff.”
El Moussa and Anstead, who continue to co-host Flip or Flop, separated in December 2016 after seven years of marriage. They share two children — daughter Taylor, 8, and son Brayden, 3 — and are eight seasons deep into Flip or Flop. Anstead remarried in December 2018 to TV presenter Ant Anstead, and the two are currently expecting their first child together.
El Moussa and Young were photographed kissing on a boat at the Portofino Hotel & Marina in Redondo Beach, California, in July. At the time, they had been dating only for a few weeks when the photos surfaced, and El Moussa said on GMA3 that his ex-wife didn’t know he was in a relationship when the news broke.
“I was like, ‘OK. Well, the cat’s out of the bag. So should I tell my ex-wife? Do I not? Do I let TMZ tell her? Who do I let tell her?’” he said. “So I guess the world just let everybody know we were together.”
When asked if it was “weird” for Anstead to find out that way, he responded, “To be honest with you, we still haven’t talked about it.”
As far as how things are going between El Moussa and Young, the Selling Sunset star said she may be thinking about moving in with him. Responding to a Q&A session on Instagram last month, Young said she’d consider moving away from her current home in Los Angeles for “Orange County [winky face emoji] hehe.”
El Moussa recently spent about $2.28 million for a single-story “bachelor-dad” pad with a pool in the Orange County town of Costa Mesa.
In an interview with PEOPLE, El Moussa gushed about the relationship, saying Young completely changed his outlook on life.
“Physically, spiritually, mentally, I was so broken,” he told the outlet. “I just never really thought that I would open up to someone again. I never thought I would be vulnerable again.”
“I saw her one day… and right when she smiled, I just lit up inside,” he said. “She’s so amazing and supportive and strong. She makes me feel better. She makes my life better.”
Photo credit: Gregg DeGuire, Slaven Vlasic, Jeff Kravitz / Contributors, Getty Images
