It’s been nearly two decades since Bill and Giuliana Rancic first met and fell in love after Giuliana interviewed the then-Apprentice winner for E! News back in 2004.
By 2006, the couple were engaged, and a year after that said their vows in Capri, Italy. And though they faced plenty of upheaval in their life, including struggling with fertility issues and Giuliana’s 2011 breast cancer diagnosis, the couple, parents to son Duke, 11, are happier than ever,
Their secret? “We love each other,” Bill, 53, says simply of how they’ve maintained such a long Hollywood union. “That’s obviously important! And we’re flexible and we compromise.”
But the real secret?
“We love spending time together,” he says of Giuliana, 49. “And we laugh a lot. We went out the other night for an early dinner and my cheeks were hurting we were laughing so hard. So we have a lot of fun together.”
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In the past decade, the couple have also become successful restaurateurs together. In 2011, they opened the Italian restaurant RPM Italian in Chicago, and later its sister restaurants RPM Steak, and RPM Italian in Washington D.C. Now, Bill says the brand is only continuing to grow.
“We’ve opened nine restaurants,” Bill says. “Hopefully West Palm Beach and Nashville will be opening soon, too. We’re working on those locations now. It started as what I thought was a bad idea 12 years ago, and it just took off. People have embraced it and fallen in love with the concept.”
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He says the restaurants are also popular with some high-profile guests.
“We’ve been fortunate,” he says. “Our regulars range from Lady Gaga to Justin Bieber to President Obama, a few other presidents,” he says. “It’s been great.”
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Other than running a dining empire, he’s also getting back into the entertainment field with his new podcast Dollar Bill with Bill Rancic, where he interviews guests about financial literacy.
“They don’t teach you this in school,” he says of why he thought it was important to launch a show about personal money and finance.
“It’s going to be a learning process for me as well, because by no means am I a financial planner or an investment broker,” he continues. “So I’m getting great guests on, I’m hearing their financial stories, their secrets to success, but also we’re talking about failures because I think you can learn a lot by learning from other people’s mistakes.”
He adds, “I think it’s going to be a good time. You’re going to be able to spend time with us and you’re going to walk away with things that you’re going to be able to improve your life with.”
