Two years ago, Bronwyn Newport made an unforgettable entrance into the Bravo universe.
It was the first episode of season 5 of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City and Newport, walked (some may say strut) into a party to meet her new castmates wearing a $15,000 heart-shaped Saint Laurent furry jacket (only one of three in existence, she says), over a lipstick-print dress. One year, countless outrageous ensembles and quippy one-liners later, viewers still can’t get enough of her.
From day one, Newport’s approach to the show has been as fearless and unapologetic as her fashion. She dove right into the drama and was wide open about her life—including her marriage to her soon-to-be ex-husband, businessman Todd Bradley, who is 26 years her senior.
“I thrive in the crazy,” Newport, 40, says as music pumps through her People photo shoot at her colorful Salt Lake City home. “I like the house to be loud.”
Chad Kirkland
These days Newport’s house is bustling with her 20-year-old daughter Gwen, Gwen’s boyfriend Logan, her mother, Marge (aka Muzzy), and Bradley all living there.
Yes, you read that correctly. Despite announcing their separation in December, Newport and Bradley are still cohabitating. “We might be the only people in the world who don’t have young children who are nesting,” she says. “But we’re doing it for our dogs.” (They have five boxers: Douglas, Zoe, Remy, Petey and Freddie, all named after House of Cards characters.)
As Newport settles in for her People interview on Jan. 19, one month after the news broke of her split, she’s ready to tell all. She doesn’t shy away from answering the tough questions, like what was her breaking point and where she stands with Bradley today: “I agreed to put my life on camera, and that can’t just be the things that benefit me or the things that are easy or the things that are happy,” she says.
Although she admits she’s nervous about stepping into this new chapter of her life, she’s hopeful about what’s next: “There are so many wonderful things coming my way.”
Newport is no stranger to handling adversity. When she was 19, she was “kicked out” of Brigham Young University for having a child out of wedlock. “There was such a stigma behind the way that I had my daughter,” says Newport, who raised Gwen without the participation of the father.
She moved back to San Francisco, where she was largely raised, to be near her parents, Muzzy and David, who died in June 2025.
She found work as an assistant at a trading desk for a bank, which had “ideal” East Coast hours so she could care for Gwen at night. One day she went to a work lunch and met Bradley, who was once the CEO of Palm Inc. (the makers of Palm Pilot), at the bar. “He asked for my email, and I was like, ‘Oh, well, maybe he’s going to mentor me,’ ” she says. When he asked her to see a movie, “I figured out it was a date pretty quickly.”
“From the beginning, he was so nice. He was so funny. I felt so at home with him,” she says. Newport also fell in love with his charisma.
“One of the most wonderful things I think about Todd, something you don’t see on the show, is how charismatic he is,” she shares. “Todd really adores people and is so helpful. If he knows somebody or he knows something that can help you, he’s going to do it for you. And I just remember early on thinking he must be an amazing son, a great dad, a wonderful brother, a fabulous friend. And for me, that’s really important how you interact with other people.”
Newport is well aware of the chatter around their age difference. “I know everyone thinks I must have had daddy issues growing up because I married somebody older,” she says. “I had a lovely, wonderful dad and a great relationship with him, but Todd was somebody who I bounced a lot of ideas off of and who really cared for me.”
They married in 2016 and moved to Salt Lake City, where she became involved in nonprofits and leaned into her love of clothes by attending international fashion weeks while being “a really hands-on mom,” she says. During COVID she completed her art history degree, which furthered her appreciation for fashion.
As Gwen neared the end of high school, “it felt like a moment for me to build my own thing,” Newport says. She signed on for Real Housewives despite her family’s concern about reality television. “Todd hates the show,” she says. “I don’t think that’s a surprise to anyone who’s seen it. He thinks that I didn’t need to do it, or I didn’t need to prove to other people who I was or who I am.”
Newport admits the show “brought out a weird dynamic” in her marriage, but makes it clear: “The cameras didn’t create our problems.” In fact, after filming ended last year, they spent a “quiet summer” at home together, mourning the loss of her father.
Chad Kirkland
“He was really there for me and my entire family throughout everything with my dad,” she says. “Whatever we’d been struggling with while filming this season seemed to just not exist in the summer. We just really understood each other and were great.”
But watching the episodes as they aired—and witnessing her obvious tension with Bradley throughout them—did play into her separation decision. “It was almost like this magical summer hadn’t happened. We were kind of right back into some of those problems.”
She calls watching it all back “really eye-opening.” Adding, “I didn’t like how needy I was, and I didn’t like how upset or defensive I was. It wasn’t a relationship that I felt like I wanted to be going forward with anymore.”
Another factor in her decision was turning 40 last September. “It was my first birthday since my dad had passed, and I was thinking about this conversation he and I had had 15 years ago,” she says of David, who had Alzheimer’s disease and died after a sudden fall.
“He and I had a very specific conversation, and I woke up on my birthday and just felt like the only other person who had been in that conversation that is so meaningful to me, that had guided me through so many things was gone,” she says. “And if I wanted anything out of that conversation, I was going to have to do it for myself.”
Newport says that realization motivated her to talk to Bradley about separating. “We went through it quietly,” she says about “slowly” unwinding their lives.
One thing that solidified her decision was attending BravoCon without Bradley in November. “It was maybe the first time that I felt like if he wasn’t [in my life], I was going to be okay.”
“It was just this pressure point of trying to explain this life that I was living to him when he was not there, and he wasn’t understanding it,” she says. After the convention, she “felt okay and happy and fine and like there were things for me in the future.”
She knew she wanted to “rip the Band-Aid off” and reveal the news while taping the season 6 reunion.
Chad Kirkland
“The reunion was the next time I was going to see the women,” she says. “I felt like since they had lived through some of the breakdown of what was going on and they had maybe lived through a version of me that was more upset or more defensive or harder to get along with, that they deserved that information.”
Plus, she wanted people to leave Bradley alone. “He doesn’t want to be talked about,” she says.
Life post-split hasn’t been easy. “It is very scary to feel like I don’t have my dad or Todd as a sounding board anymore,” Newport says. “But it’s also a really wonderful, positive thing for me to do what’s best for myself going forward. It’s tricky to talk about. I’m not happy. This is not what I wanted. It’s not where I hoped for us to be going. But from where we are, I can see wonderful things for both of us.”
“I really care about Todd,” she adds. “That’s not something that turns off overnight. I want the very best for him. I really do want to be best friends with Todd. I think as we’ve gotten closer to that in the last few weeks, there’s a lot more of that old happiness and joy for both of us.”
One day, she even hopes she can go on a double date with him and his next love interest. “I would love to go out with Todd and somebody new for him in the future. I would terrorize whoever he dates and it would just be so funny for me. It’s amazing. I’d have all kinds of opinions on it.”
As for her dating life, if you’re wondering if Newport has seen fan edits on social media shipping her and costar Whitney Rose—yes, she has. And no, you will not see them together.
“Of course I’ve seen that. I get tagged on TikTok every single day in these Whitney and I compilations,” she says. “Whitney and I are not going on any dates. She and I talked the other night about getting dinner and I actually thought if we post an Instagram Story, I’m going to have to caption it, ‘We did not kiss.’”
All jokes aside, she calls Whitney “a great friend” and “a great sounding board.” She’s quick to add, “I really enjoy hanging out with her, but those edits are going to stay on TikTok, not in my real life.”
One castmember that Newport says has been the most supportive since the news of her split came out, has been Mary M. Cosby. “Mary has texted me every few days,” Newport says, adding that Cosby called her on each holiday since the split, too.
“Mary has shared things with me about things that she’s gone through in her life or in different relationships she’s been in and tried to really encourage me to figure out what’s best for me.”
Another surprise? “[Mary] also sends me really funny TikToks,” Newport reveals. “I don’t know if everybody is familiar with Mary Cosby’s TikTok game, but she finds all the best TikToks and some shady ones. Mary sent me shady TikToks about the other girls sometimes.”
While she says she’s in a good place with Heather Gay, Meredith Marks, Angie Katsanevas and even Britani Bateman (whom she calls ”my much older kid sister”), the same cannot be said for Lisa Barlow.
“I’m in a great place with Lisa in that, I’m in no place with Lisa,” Newport says. “I guess we approached the show very differently. We approached our relationship very differently. I thought we were close. I’ve realized we were not in her eyes and I’ve also realized since then that maybe I don’t want to be close.”
Chad Kirkland
She continues, “As I learn more about who she wants to be seen as, it’s probably not someone I want to be super close with. And that sounds like I mean that with heavy disrespect. So lovingly, I just don’t think we mix so well.”
Off camera, Newport is focused these days on expanding her love of fashion through her Substack newsletter, working with nonprofits such as The Road Home and local LGBTQIA charities (including Encircle, Utah Pride Center and Equality Utah), and being more hands-on with a more recent passion, producing Broadway shows. She hopes to be a part of the costuming of the shows down the line, which is a wheelhouse she knows very well.
“There’s like a whole show of the things that I put on to go film our show,” she says of her on-theme outfits for every onscreen occasion. “There’s a rabbit hole there always with me in my outfits.”
Case in point: She’s worn an inflatable Moschino number on board a yacht, a hot dog dress for a drag show (also Moschino) and carried a pigeon-shaped clutch to go pigeon shooting, among many other themed looks.
“I always think when I’m getting dressed, I should Instagram this and just save it, and then sometimes it’s chaotic and I’m stressed about whether or not I’m going to fight with the women and I don’t do the whole thing,” she says about sharing more about the planning process. “Those women could throw a drink at me, next season they could stab me, but I’m into my outfit, my purse works, the accessories are right on brand with whatever fight I have.”
While a lot has changed since she joined the show, she hopes to continue on Housewives. “It has brought me so much joy and friendships,” she says, adding that it’s also helped her soften her tense relationship with Muzzy.
“It’s brought me a lot of introspection about who I am as a person, what I want in my life, who I want to be in other people’s lives. I always joke there’s like no nobility in reality TV. I know it’s not like highbrow, but there is a lot of like richness about life, who we are, how we show up, what we look for, what we want,” she shares. “We all fundamentally want the same things, but we go about getting it in different ways. We go about accepting it in different ways, how we handle it when we don’t get what we want. It’s fascinating.”
As she enters a new year, she’s ready to step into this new phase in life. “I wake up, and I feel different than I have in the past,” she says. “I get to show up in each of these experiences not feeling encumbered by some of the stress and the heaviness that I’ve been carrying.” She’s quick to joke: “But now I can’t use the excuse ‘I’m going through something’ when I’m mean to the women on the show!”
