The topic on everyone’s mind. Tom Sandoval and Raquel Leviss‘ affair was a shock to Vanderpump Rules viewers — but the cast was seemingly onto the couple for a while.
Us Weekly confirmed in March 2023 that Tom and Ariana Madix called it quits after nearly a decade because he cheated with Raquel. On screen, however, the California native gushed about her connection with Tom Schwartz following his split from Katie Maloney.
After Schwartz and Raquel’s hook up, their costars started to question if the beauty pageant contestant was linked to someone new in their group.
“You get a lot of joy out of Raquel as well,” Katie quipped to Sandoval during an April 2023 episode. “You go to The Abbey together at one o’clock in the morning.”
Sandoval, for his part, slammed the accusations, saying, “Dude, what the f—k are you even saying? Get the f—k out of here, man.”
The Utah native, for her part, continued to question the Missouri native’s private outing with Raquel. “I was trying to explain to Ally [Lewber] that Tom and Ariana don’t keep each other on leashes. They don’t have rules for each other in their relationship,” she told cameras about doubting Sandoval’s commitment to Ariana. “But also, my opinion of Raquel couldn’t be lower at this point so if Tom and Ariana do have an open relationship, then Ariana knows nothing about it.”
Off screen, Raquel issued a public apology after Ariana and Sandoval’s split made headlines, writing via Instagram in March, “I want to apologize for my actions and my choices foremost to Ariana, and to my friends and the fans so invested in our relationships. There is no excuse, I am not a victim and I must own my actions and I deeply regret hurting Ariana.”
One month later, the Tom Sandoval & the Most Extras frontman claimed he tried to end his romance with Ariana in the past.
“We didn’t tell anybody, but she knew,” he alleged on an episode of the “Howie Mandel Does Stuff” podcast in April 2023. “She was trying to, like convince me not to be broken up … but that was not the case. She asked me that day as we were leaving about, like — because we had talked about fertilizing [her] eggs, which I never did. She was like, ‘So, what do you think about doing a sperm check to fertilize my eggs?’ And I’m like, ‘What? We’re broken up.’ … I was like, ‘We’ll talk about this later, I gotta go do my show.’”
According to Sandoval, the former SUR bartender was “fully in denial” about their breakup. “It scared me. It really scared me,” he said after claiming he and Ariana parted ways on Valentine’s Day. “That’s why, like you say, ‘Why didn’t you just break up with her then?’ It’s because of the threat of … self-sabotaging. And you know how f–king — how much that hurts me?”
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Scroll on to see every time Sandoval initially denied his affair with Raquel:
