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Although she rarely speaks about him on The Real Housewives of Orange County, Emily Simpson’s first husband was a topic of conversation among the ‘Wives in Season 19, Episode 5 as the women were giving marriage advice to Jennifer Pedranti ahead of her marriage to Ryan Boyajian.
“He was a good guy,” Emily shared, but then added there is a very big difference between her ex and her current husband, Shane Simpson. “Shane is my person. I think maybe that would be my advice. I think everybody has a person.”
Emily has kept details about her first marriage scarce over the years, but did open up to The Daily Dish podcast about it back in 2018.
“It was a brief [marriage]. It was five years, but he was in the military, so I didn’t see him very often at all,” she shared at the time. “We didn’t have kids… we didn’t even have assets together. I was in law school. He was far away—I think he was in Afghanistan—and things like that.”
Emily later went on to marry Shane on Valentine’s Day 2009 “in a small ceremony at the Bellagio” in Las Vegas she revealed during an Instagram post in 2019. Although Emily and Shane share three children—daughter Annabelle and twin sons Keller and Luke— Emily also noted her wedding day was “the day I gained two bonus daughters,” Shelby and Chanel, as she embraced Shane’s daughters with his first wife.
Emily Simpson reveals details of her first marriage and divorce
Emily and her first husband wed when she was 26 years old, and “parted ways” when she graduated from law school. She had moved her studies from the University of Dayton in Ohio to the Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego when her husband was transferred to Camp Pendleton in the area. Emily called their divorce “amicable,” and added that she was actually one of her very first clients.
“I did the divorce myself. I did a summary dissolution, which was really easy,” she told The Daily Dish podcast in 2018. “I forget about it. I’m like, ‘Oh, yeah, I was married before.’”
RELATED: Emily & Shane Simpson Reveal Their Next Home Renovation Project: “This Is Going to Be Huge” (EXCLUSIVE)
Emily dropped a bombshell when she revealed that she’s been unable to learn anything about her ex since they divorced.
“I have never been able to find him,” she shared in 2018. “When he and I divorced, he was pretty high-ranking in the Marines and so that was a long time ago. So I have a feeling that he’s probably still in the Marine Corps, but he’s probably really, really high-ranking, so he probably has some crazy security clearance, because I can’t find him. I tried to Google him… I just wonder, did he get married? Does he have kids?”
How did Emily Simpson and Shane get engaged?
Emily, who joined RHOC during Season 13, admitted that her second husband, Shane, was her boss, and proposed to her in an unorthodox way: over Google Chat.
“Prior to getting married, Shane and I did not date. At all,” she shared during the Season 13 premiere. “We had worked together for about three years at the same real estate consulting firm, and we had always been friends. He was funny, witty, and always made me laugh.”
RELATED: Emily Simpson Makes an Emotional Confession About Her Son Luke: “How Sad Is That?”
She also detailed Shane’s proposal in the episode: “After he and his first wife divorced, we began chatting on Google Chat and one day he just said, ‘Want to get married?’ I was 32 at the time, ready to settle down and have kids, and thought, ‘What the heck!’ I really just took a huge leap of faith.”
Emily marked the couple’s 16th anniversary with a comedic video tribute to Shane on March 1, and their marriage will soon take on new challenges when Emily joins a new family for Wife Swap: The Real Housewives Edition.
With the RHOC Season 19 reunion wrapped, don’t miss Andy Cohen’s behind the scenes details, including who he grabbed a drink with post-reunion.
