NEED TO KNOW
Mary Cosby is responding to the accusations set forth about her in TLC’s recent docuseries The Cult of the Real Housewife.
During part 2 of The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City reunion on Bravo on Tuesday, Jan. 20, host Andy Cohen asked Mary, 53, for her thoughts on the docuseries, which claimed that she and her husband, Robert Cosby Sr., turned the Faith Temple Pentecostal Church started by her grandmother into a cult, among other bombshells.
“It hurt me, of course,” Mary said. “Definitely hurt me. But I’ve been through a lot, Andy. I’m pretty tough. So, it hurt, and it just got put in the pile of all the rest of the things that hurt me.”
Andy then asked Mary what it was like to see fans support her amid the accusations.
“That felt good,” Mary said. “I’m thankful for that. They’ll see the truth.”
As to why she thinks her church became a focal point of the docuseries, Mary said, “I think it’s because of the policy and the rules and the different things that our church does.”
“They’re not used to a pentecostal church in Utah,” she said. “They’re not used to a Black church. I have no idea.”
In The Cult of the Real Housewife, several of Mary’s ex-congregants claimed that she and Robert Sr. financially abused them and pressured them and other church members into making financial donations, known as “heave offerings.”
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Former church member Rosalind Enoch said in the docuseries that she lived with Mary and Robert Sr. and worked in their home starting in early 2000. She said her full-time responsibilities included housekeeping and running errands, but she claimed she was never paid for her work.
“In the five years that I worked for Robert and Mary, I was never paid,” Rosalind said in the docueries. “I was collecting unemployment at one stage, and I guess that was what they thought I would live on. But no, I wasn’t paid. It was more like a slave plantation.”
Another ex-congregant, Susie Tunson, said in the docuseries that her sister Pat Tunson worked at Mary and Robert Sr.’s home “for many, many years.”
Rosalind said she and Pat developed a friendship while they were both working in the home.
“I recall one time Robert and Mary talked to Pat so badly, things like, ‘You’re a slave. You’re going to work here until you die, because if you don’t, you’re going to die anyway and you’re going to hell,'” Rosalind claimed. “Pat would take insults, Pat was called a liar and a thief. But this almost 80-year-old woman still believed what Robert and Mary had embedded in her.”
In the docuseries, Rosalind recalled a time Pat was “crying profusely” at the home but wouldn’t go into details about what had happened.
“She said, ‘Today was so bad. I just wish I could go to sleep and not wake up,'” Rosalind claimed.
According to the docuseries, Pat died of natural causes at 81 in 2024, while still working for Mary and Robert Sr. Susie said in the docuseries that Mary and Robert Sr. kicked her out of the church because she had told her brother, Don Tunson, to stop donating so much of his money to them, and she was not allowed to attend Pat’s funeral.
“It was one last assault they could put on me,” she said.
Elsewhere in the docuseries, Mary’s cousin Dan Cosby and former church member Ernest Enoch claimed that Mary’s now-deceased ex-congregant Cameron Williams told them that he and Mary had an extramarital affair.
The Cult of the Real Housewife is a three-part docuseries that traces the dramatic rise of Faith Temple from its founding by Mary’s grandmother to her passing. It also covers the controversial transfer of leadership and Mary’s marriage to Robert Sr.
While Mary has not addressed every claim made in the documentary, she previously called the project “sad and a shame” and “not true” when asked about it at BravoCon 2025 in November. Neither Mary nor Robert Sr.’s representatives have responded to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
The Cult of the Real Housewife is available to stream on HBO Max and discovery+.
