Rosie DiMare Crashed Rhode Island’s Most Dramatic Friend Group

Before Rosie DiMare was a Real Housewife of Rhode Island, she was a hard-news reporter, which is to say she has been asking people uncomfortable questions for a living for some time now. These days, she asks them of her castmates—which is roughly how she ended up known as Nosy Rosie. Poking, prodding, and saying what nobody wants said is, as she puts it, “just kind of in my nature.” Whether that makes her the troublemaker or the only one paying attention is up for debate. She grew up in Massachusetts, went to Boston University, and interned at Kiss 108, where she also met her husband, Rich. With RHORI’s finale airing this month, we talked to her about Del’s lemonade, lip filler, and (hopefully) becoming best friends with Andy Cohen. —Jonathan Soroff

Five years ago, you were a Providence news anchor waking up at 2 a.m. What would you have said if I’d told you you’d be on Real Housewives?
I would have thought you were a crazy person. Not only that, I’d be like, “What do you mean? I’m in a news contract. There’s no way I’m gonna be on a show like that.” Keep in mind that five years ago, I was living in my apartment in Providence. I was single, and I was getting up at 2 o’clock in the morning to go to work every day on the news. In my mind, as a 30-year-old, I had totally made it. I was paying all my bills by myself. I had bought myself a condo. I was driving my dream car, which was my Jeep Wrangler. I was going out in Boston with my friends from BU, doing stuff in Providence, doing the news. I was one of the main faces of the number-one station in Rhode Island. How could it get any better than that? So I definitely didn’t see this coming.

Were you a Housewives fan before this?
I was a Kathy Hilton fan, so I would watch Real Housewives of Beverly Hills a little bit here and there. I just think she’s so funny. But I was getting up in the middle of the night for most of my career, going to work at 3 a.m., and I wasn’t able to tune in at 8 or 9 p.m. I was not not a fan, but I wasn’t an avid viewer.

Did your years as a hard-news reporter change the way you operated on the show?
One million percent. You also have to remember that I’m 35. I’ve been out of the news for 2.5 years, but I spent all of my twenties as a hard-news reporter. I didn’t start doing traffic or lifestyle until I was 30. Before that, I was going to crime scenes, interviewing politicians, asking hard questions, noticing inconsistencies, saying, “That doesn’t make sense. Explain this to me.” I’d be very blunt. I am very blunt. I’m also very logical, and a little bit too literal sometimes. Rich makes fun of me for it. But when you’re used to asking important politicians who are 60 years old very uncomfortable questions, sitting down with a group of girls is not uncomfortable.

Did you go in to filming RHORI with a plan?
No. I wish I had. I didn’t realize that I needed to do that, which is very naive. I thought you just go on the show, and you just be yourself, and everyone will like you, and everyone will get to know you, and everyone will want to hear what you have to say, and you’ll just all be friends. By about Episode 4 or 5, I learned that was not the case. And I know other people went into it with a plan or with a pact or whatever. Next year, maybe I’ll go in with a plan.

Rosie DiMare (center) with cast mates Elizabeth “Liz” McGraw and Alicia Carmody, on a RHORI girls’ weekend in Newport. / Photo by Scott Eisen/Bravo

How real is it, really?
I think it’s very real.

Do the producers push the drama, or do you all do that on your own?
I don’t think they encourage anything. It’s just: This is a show, and they’re watching your real life, and you know, we need drama for it to make sense.

Who was the peacekeeper?
Hmm. I think Alicia [Carmody] was trying her best to be neutral, but I don’t necessarily know if there was anyone who was a peacekeeper.

Who was the shit-stirrer?
They’ll tell you it was me. And I agree that sometimes it was, because I would ask questions they didn’t want asked or point out things that they didn’t want pointed out. I wasn’t ever doing it maliciously. It’s just kind of in my nature. But I think that as the show goes on, you see who’s actually just out there causing problems for no reason. You’ll see.

So you deny being the bad guy?
Maybe I’m the villain. Maybe I really am. Who knows?

Worst part of having cameras on you 24/7?
I actually didn’t mind the cameras. I didn’t always want the girls around, but I had no problem with the cameras. [Laughs.]

Anything you’d do differently?
I really just tried to be myself, and I think my only regret is that I should have fought back a lot sooner than I did. I’m not proud of the fact that I cried a lot. I would come home, and Rich would say, “We’ve been together for five years, and I’ve seen you cry like once, and this summer you’ve cried every day.” It was very overwhelming, and I was just trying to understand what was going on a lot of the time. I would say things, or point things out, or ask questions, and then I’d get beat up for it. And now [on RHORI], suddenly I’m thrown into a dynamic where there’s a secret language I don’t understand because I didn’t grow up with these people, and nothing I do is right. I also learned the hard way that you are not allowed to ask questions here. And instead of what I would normally do, which is fight back a little harder, I would kind of back down. So I would say my biggest regret was being a little soft.

You have been the subject of some wild rumors. In Episode 4, a castmate suggested you left NBC 10 because you were having an affair with a higher-up, but in that same Episode you clarified that you left because you had colitis.
They can accuse me of a bunch of things, but you will see—either on the show or in the [upcoming RHORI] reunion—that, like, corporate America has paper trails. They want to say I didn’t leave on medical leave, but why would I admit to having colitis? You can say whatever you want, but if it’s factually incorrect? I’ve only ever been on TV and told the truth, and so seeing that you can just say whatever you want was mind-boggling to me. Like, honestly, having an affair with someone that I worked with would have been far less embarrassing than admitting that I was bleeding out of my butt and wearing diapers.

What has the show gotten right about you, and what has it missed?
I do hope people get to know me more. I think what you see in Episode 5, of me talking about how much I love gay men, and how silly I’m being with my dog, Clemmy, in the confessionals. I say, “Don’t look at her cooch” or whatever, which was crazy. Why did I say that? But that stuff really does represent who I am. People don’t really know about my personal life or my marriage. They don’t really know what I do for work, other than what’s been made fun of on the show so far. So I think there’s a lot still to come. As for showing that I have a little bit of a messy side, and that I kind of clock everything that’s going on pretty quickly and will blurt out what is not supposed to be said, that’s also true. I’m somewhat socially awkward. I don’t always understand what’s going on in the group dynamic. They’re not my favorite qualities about myself, but they’re real.

Photo courtesy of Bravo

Favorite memory from doing the show?
On Episode 6 or 7, Ashley [Iaconetti] and I have the most fun on a waterslide. It was the best time. I also loved another scene, with Alicia and Alicia’s daughter in my Jeep. I had fun with the bouncy shoes. I tried my best to show that I’m just this silly girl who loves the Disney Channel and doesn’t take life too seriously. I’m so lucky to have Alicia and Ashley as my real-life close friends. I would never have met Rulla [Nehme Pontarelli] without this experience, and now we’re becoming really good friends. Even with all the drama and whatever, a lot of it was really fun.

Why do you think the Real Housewives are so popular?
You know, I see these memes and reels, and it’s like there’s something about seeing other people fight and have total chaos that somehow calms their nervous system as a viewer. It doesn’t calm my nervous system, but I think it calms theirs.

Your favorite thing about Rhode Island?
Probably the food, which is such a crazy thing to say, but Rhode Island has such good food, and I feel like the food scene isn’t appreciated enough.

Coffee milk, stuffies, Del’s—which of these are you actually eating?
Gotta love the Del’s lemonade! The production staff was obsessed with it all summer, which I found so odd. Every day after work, they had to get a Del’s lemonade, and I was like, “All right, sure.” I don’t really do coffee milk, but I love a pizza strip or a party pizza. It’s so funny, too, because I grew up in Massachusetts, right near the Rhode Island border, and yet I didn’t learn a lot of these things until I was living here.

Where are you eating when you’re not trying to impress anyone?
There are so many good spots. But right near our house, there’s a place called Safehouse in East Greenwich. It’s not the fanciest restaurant, but it’s probably my favorite because it’s close, like five minutes away. But when I tell you, they have some of the best chicken Parm and the best drinks.

DiMare at Red Sox Bravo night with castmates (left to right) Ashley Iaconetti and Alicia Carmody. / Via Getty

You grew up in Milton, Mass.?
We moved there when I was in middle school or so, but I like Milton. My parents live in Milton. My sister lives in Milton with her husband and their baby. The town square is so cute, right near the Canton border. I love Milton—we’re big Milton people.

The accents on this show are operatic. Anyone laying it on?
No, I think that’s really how they all talk. Alicia’s getting heat for her accent or the things she says. I can tell you with 100 percent certainty: She is 100 percent being herself, and she really does talk that way, and she really does act that way. As one of her close friends, I get voice memos on a daily basis that are so funny. If I put them on the Internet, they’d get a million views and a million likes. We are dealing with someone who’s actually hysterical and can’t help it.

Rhode Island is the smallest state and has the most regional accents. Explain.
It’s like a small little town, though. Everybody knows each other. But there are different sectors, and they all talk a certain way: Johnston, North Providence, Cranston, Newport, South County. But overall, I think of the Rhode Island accent as a mix between Boston and New York. I’ve said that since I started reporting here. Then there’s the added cultural thing, with a big Italian and Portuguese dynamic. And then there are people like me who have no accent because I had to go to speech school for journalism.

Walk me through your beauty regimen.
Hmm. My routine is so extravagant. My whole thing is that I do a lot so that I’m low maintenance in everyday life. I get the Botox. I get the lasers. I get the facials. I get the hair extensions. I get the lip filler. I get all the things so that even though I have to do all these things on different days, I actually wake up looking pretty, and that’s kind of my secret.

Rosie DiMare with her husband Rich on May 14, 2026 in New York City. / Photo by Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for Food Bank for NYC

Does your husband, Rich, who’s also a performer, sing to you?
He never sings to me. Honestly, he sings to the dog more than he sings to me. But one of the things I love about Rich is that we’ll have sing-alongs in the car, and instead of it just being me being a weirdo, singing at the top of my lungs, he does it, too. Or we’ll go to karaoke, and I make him sing all the boy parts from something like Beauty and the Beast. I’m Belle, and he has to sing the Beast part. But I don’t need him to be singing to me on a daily basis. That would be weird.

You met Rich while you were interning at KISS 108 for Billy Costa. What was it like to start your career at the biggest morning show in Boston?
People don’t get it—this was, like, the biggest deal to me ever. I was 19 years old, like, “I made it, I’m a star now.” I’d listened to KISS 108 my whole life going to high school. We’d listen to “Matty in the Morning.” It was crazy that this was happening to me. I would go in early, stay late, trying to be the best intern ever. I just remember being at BU thinking, “Wow, I did it.” It was such a highlight. I loved working there. After I worked for the morning show for a year, I started working for the promo and production department and learned so much doing that too. It was my dream job and my first job.

For the record, I was not Rich’s intern. I was Billy Costa’s intern, but Rich helped me way more than Billy did. And you can tell Billy I said that. [Laughs.]

Thing you’re proudest of?
Being married to Rich, and being a good dog mom. I’m very proud of the house we’re building, and the fact that we’re doing it ourselves. I’m very proud of myself for my television career that I had for more than 10 years, and how hard I worked to get where I am.

What’s the show actually opened up for you?
I really don’t know. Even though the girls make fun of my little TV show, I’m very happy with my little TV show [Rhode Trippin’]. It’s on ABC 6, every Saturday at 6:30. I have a decent audience, and I get to help some local businesses. Now, it’s becoming a few national businesses, too, and I get to give them shout-outs or do commercial work for them. I don’t think I want to ever go back to being on the news or doing anything like that full time. I like being able to just do my little thing.

The Real Housewives of Rhode Island cast and friends (l-r): Liz McGraw, Dolores Catania, Ashley Iaconetti, Rosie DiMare, Rulla Nehme Pontarelli, Andy Cohen, Alicia Carmody, Kelsey Swanson, Jo-Ellen Tiberi in New York City on March 30, 2026. / Photo by: Noam Galai/Bravo

How has it changed you?
I’m very happy with my life. I was very happy with the way my life was before. I’m ecstatic to be able to do more DJing. I’m doing WeHo Pride, which would never have happened if it weren’t for the publicity. I’m a big ally to the gay community, and I love that. So it’s exciting to have more opportunities, but if I’m being honest, I’m very happy with the way things are.

Who do you get compared to?
I’ve been getting a lot of Katy Perry/Megan Fox mixtures online, like “She kinda looks like if they had a baby,” which I don’t hate at all. It’s very nice. I’ve been compared to Whitney Rose a lot, which I don’t really understand the comparison, but I’m here for it. That’s fine.

Tell me a secret about Andy Cohen.
I don’t really know Andy Cohen. He seems like a great guy. He went to BU, like me, but not at the same time. I haven’t spent that much time with him. I hope to make him my best friend. And he has great hair.

Additional reporting by Catarina Maia Amal and Camille Dodero.

A version of this article was first published in the print edition of the June 2026 issue, with the headline,“Real Talk with Rosie.”

Related: New England Finally Has Its Own Real Housewives—and They’re Incredible