Adrianne Curry once thought happily ever after meant marriage and babies — but after meeting her second husband, Matthew Rhode, she’s learned what true love really is.
Fresh off winning cycle 1 of America’s Next Top Model, Curry got engaged to Christopher Knight after meeting him on season 4 of Surreal Life in 2004 when she was only 23 years old. At the time, Knight, who’s best known for his portrayal of Peter Brady in The Brady Brunch, was 48.
Their relationship catapulted them into the spotlight, and the two went on to star in their own VH1 reality series, titled My Fair Brady, before eventually tying the knot in 2006. After five years of marriage and three seasons chronicling their rollercoaster relationship, Curry and Knight separated in May 2011 and filed for divorce soon after.
While she may have her regrets, Curry tells PEOPLE exclusively that she’s happy to have come out the other side — and that the difficult experience led her to the type of love she’s always known she deserved.
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“It was very difficult to have a relationship on TV,” she says of filming the most intimate parts of her life with cameras. “And what was most difficult about it is most people would say we were a complete train wreck, and that was us putting our best foot forward because we knew we were being filmed. So I assure you, it was way worse with the cameras off.”
While she isn’t ashamed of her stint on America’s Next Top Model, even now Curry emphasizes how “deeply embarrassed” she still is about her time on My Fair Brady.
“I feel like I was losing my voice,” she recalls. “I was just becoming this corrupted s—face. But my heart was in the right place. I thought I was in love, and at least I have that to go on. I didn’t have some insidious evil master plan. I thought I was in love, and I wanted to start a family really bad.”
At the time all of her friends were starting families, and Curry “felt so left behind,” she says.
Winning ANTM “threw me off my life path,” she adds, noting that if she hadn’t nabbed the title, “I probably, by 22 years old, would have been married and having babies.”
VH1
“That is just how I was raised, so I felt so much pressure to find someone and settle down [and] I did,” she adds.
In the season 1 finale of My Fair Brady, Knight proposed to Curry by leading her through their empty home. Curry, who believed she was being evicted, began crying until he pulled out a ring and asked her to marry him.
“I’ve been proposed to twice,” Curry tells PEOPLE wryly. “Once, someone made it out like they were dumping me on camera so that I would cry my eyes out. And I said yes, which doesn’t seem very loving. And then the next proposal was a man on his knees, holding my hand, in a little tiny hotel room in Kanab, Utah, pouring his heart out to me.”
“So my first proposal sucked,” she says with a laugh, sharing how she felt “so much pressure” to have a positive reaction as she was “so young” and surrounded by cameras. She admits that the experience “threw me through such a loop” — and if she were to receive the same proposal today, she’d say, “F— off. What is this? That’s evil.”
“I lived through it. I put seven years into that relationship, and we both moved on,” Curry continues. “He is remarried again. I’m married again, and I regret having gotten married, but every time I get stuck in that regret hole, I have to remind myself I probably wouldn’t be where I am today if I didn’t do all that stupid s— then.”
After her first marriage, the former reality star says that learned she needed “someone who valued and adored me as much as I valued and adored them.” While she didn’t want an “infatuation or a pedestal,” she says she wanted someone who “truly valued my opinion.”
When she met Rhode, her now husband, Curry had a “list of everything I didn’t want” in a future partner. She admits that her previous experiences had made her guarded, and she was “probably way too hard” on Rhode, a voice actor for movie trailers — but he stuck around.
Adrianne Curry-Rhode/Instagram
On Sept. 15, 2018, Curry and Rhode exchanged vows in a Game of Thrones-inspired wedding at Glacier National Park in Montana with only their wedding photographer in attendance.
“He’s the funniest motherf—er on this planet. He will make me laugh so hard that my stomach is in knots of pain and I’m sobbing laughing,” she says of Rhode.
“I know when we can’t have sex anymore and we’re too old to even walk, we’re at least going to be sitting there laughing at each other’s farts,” she gushes. “And that’s a beautiful thing.”
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Now that she’s found her happily ever after, Curry hopes that she and Knight have “both learned” from their relationship as they build lives with the right people.
“I hope he’s happy, wherever he is, and I guess I’m grateful I did it, because I wouldn’t have met my husband now,” she says. “I wish I hadn’t gotten married, but every time I fall into that regret trap, I have to remind myself I wouldn’t be here today if that hadn’t happened.”
