As Amanda Batula worked on repairing her crumbling marriage with Kyle Cooke on Season 1 of In The City, she dropped a bombshell about a hefty payment she’d just made to her husband, several months prior to their eventual split.
While awaiting Amanda’s arrival during a girls’ night out at an NYC rooftop bar, Lindsay Hubbard revealed to close friends and castmates Georgina Ferzli and Yvonne Najor what she’d learned during their recent meetup. “I feel so bad for Amanda and Kyle,” Lindsay remarked. “Like, it’s not good. They have very separate lives. Amanda didn’t pay rent for the last three years.”
When the two asked if Kyle really didn’t care that he was footing the entire monthly rent bill, Lindsay continued, “He tallied it all up and charged her last week. … I s–t you not. [He] charged her last week, so then she had to pay him.”
RELATED: Amanda Batula Shares Rare Details on Her and Kyle’s Finances, Including “Separate Bank Accounts”
That’s when a flashback to their grocery store outing from four days earlier rolled, with an onscreen graphic detailing that Amanda’s back rent payment to Kyle totaled $117,000.
“He has a spreadsheet of, like, all of this money that I owed him,” Amanda explained to Lindsay in the clip. “I already paid it. No sweat off my back. We’re good.”
When Lindsay declared that she finally understood “where the resentment’s coming from” between her and Kyle, Amanda only laughed in response.
Kyle Cooke details Loverboy’s continued financial issues on In The City
Earlier in the May 19 series premiere, Kyle had admitted that he was still very much feeling the weight of Loverboy’s recent financial downturn, which he’d previously opened up about on Summer House Season 10.
As Kyle explained to Kenny Martin, he’d recently invested $500,000 of his own money into Loverboy just “to keep the lights on,” and, even then, he still had to lay off five employees in recent weeks.
RELATED: Kyle Cooke Is Under “Financial Pressure” with Loverboy on In The City: Where It Stands Now
“Now, I’m basically on the financial brink of disaster,” Kyle admitted in a confessional. “That’s one of the reasons why I started DJing: to pay the bills. If I don’t find a partner, either to buy Loverboy or take on our operations, we will go out of business by the end of this year.”
Why Amanda Batula was in financial “limbo” with Kyle Cooke last summer
As details on the severity of Loverboy’s financial crisis came to light on Summer House, Lindsay pointed out that Amanda and Kyle did not sign a prenup. Then, she asked how the beverage company’s decline might affect Amanda, should they decide to go their separate ways.
Conceding that she didn’t “have answers” to that question, Amanda added, “I feel like I’m kind of just… in limbo, numb to it, compartmentalizing.”
She continued, “But, like, we have separate bank accounts. Like, even when we got married, it never became a partnership. Like, it’s always been him, he does his thing, and, like, then I do mine. But I know, like, whatever’s happening right now is not good.”
As Amanda elaborated to a Summer House producer, “When Kyle took out the small business loan, it was not a conversation he had with me. It, like, happened, and then he told me about it. This man’s an entrepreneur, he’s a businessman, he went to business school. Like, why would I ever question his business decisions, ever? I don’t know anything. I know nothing. I do art, OK?”
After she and Kyle eventually announced their separation in January 2026, Amanda revealed that she had no intention to take half of Loverboy. As the In The City trailer teased, however, the estranged couple’s preceding conversations on the matter might be another point of contention.
In a sneak peek at an upcoming tense one-on-one, Amanda warned Kyle, “We don’t have a prenup, but if you come for me, I’ll come for you.” When he responded, “That would be a losing battle,” Amanda shot back, “Are you threatening me?”
In the meantime, get more details on what to expect from Amanda and Kyle on In The City.
