NEED TO KNOW
Mary Cosby is opening up about her complicated relationship with her late mother.
The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City star’s mom, Rosalind Cazares, died in January 2025, as Cosby filmed the current sixth season of the show. During the episode that aired on Oct. 7, she spoke about her death.
“She had just died during that time, so I felt everything came back,” Cosby tells PEOPLE. “I feel like it was a load off of me. I was able to breathe and just sigh and be like, ‘Okay, that part’s over.’ ”
Prior to her mom’s death, Cosby, 53, says she “felt like I was just walking through a storm” with her. “She was fighting me, going against me, trying to control me, trying to judge me,” she says.
Cosby adds, “That’s why I think it made me a better mom, because it showed me, ‘Don’t be like that to my child.’ If my child tells me that he believes in something, believe him. If he’s wrong, tell him he’s wrong. I just feel like my mom didn’t do that. It was her word or the highway. I don’t ever want to be that kind of person.”
Since the first season of RHOSLC aired in 2020, Cosby says her mom would write an article about her “in the local paper” every week. “She was just talking down and saying bad stuff and lying,” she says. “It was dark. It was a dark space.”
Cosby says the drama with Cazares started long before the show, though. “Immediately, once my grandmother passed [in 1997], she started wearing her clothes,” she says. “She started wearing her hats and wearing her jewelry, and she just wanted all of her stuff. I was like, ‘No, we’re going to leave things where they are. We’re not going to touch anything.’ She thought that she was supposed to pick up and take over control and, no, she wasn’t.”
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A year after her grandmother’s death, Cosby married Robert Sr., her step-grandfather, and took over her grandmother’s church. She and Robert Sr. share a son, Robert Jr.
Despite all they’d been through, Cosby “was sad” to learn that her mom had died “alone” in Maryland.
“When she got to the hospital they said she went too long without oxygen to her brain,” Cosby claims. “So that means that she was alone for a long time. I just feel like how you live is how you leave. A very rough way to leave this earth.”
“I just hope that she did everything that she was supposed to do with the Man upstairs so that she doesn’t have to be in the darker side of life for eternity,” she adds. “I don’t want that for anyone.”
The reality star is a firm believer in “what you put out is what you get back.”
“You put out good, good comes back to you,” Cosby says. “I try to live by that, and it gets you through anything. I’m always trying to put out good into the universe.”
The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on Bravo.
