RHOC alum Jo De La Rosa says ex Slade Smiley 'bought' their spot on the Bravo hit's first season

Real Housewives Of Orange County alum Jo De La Rosa has just revealed the shocking story of how ex Slade Smiley helped finagle their way onto the series. 

The former Bravo star, who was on season one of the original Housewives series, admitted the couple basically paid to get cast during the latest episode of Behind The Velvet Rope With David Yontef. 

On the podcast, De La Rosa, 40, says she found out years later that Slade, 47, bought a pricey ticket to a swanky charity gala to secure their spot on the show.

‘Like he bought our way into being a part of a cast basically!’ she said.

‘Yes. So it was actually Slade that got us on and he was at a charity event and I just knew that they were looking for like the fifth couple to cast,’ she dished.

It seemed the producers were interested in the couple’s dynamic.

‘Because… I was so young and he was older and there was this weird… just interesting 15 year difference between us. They really liked that dynamic.’ [Note: The former couple appear to only be seven-years apart.]

From their they got the ball rolling.

‘And so Slade just came home one day and was like, “Hey, so decided to move forward on this.” And I was like, “You’re going to have cameras do what come into our house.” You know? Cause back then reality was not a big thing.

‘It was like Road Rules, looking at beach that there wasn’t like a lot of stuff. So we, it really was foreign. What a bunch of crew with cameras were going to be doing following you everywhere. 

‘So that’s how I thought we got on. Originally,’ she said. ‘I later found out that Slade actually bought a charity event ticket and that’s actually how we ended up on there. I just recently found this out, reading an article actually. 

Jo said at the time, it didn’t occur to her there could be any behind-the-scenes deals.

‘I was so young then I really didn’t know,’ she explained. 

‘I didn’t ask a lot of questions. I just heard charity event and we were cast. I was like, okay, you don’t ask a lot of questions when you were young.’

David asked if Slade bought the ticket so he could make a pitch for the pair, but Jo claimed it was more direct than that.

‘It was actually the charity event [itself] or he bought [a producer] a ticket I guess, to actually be the first couples cast. Like he bought our way into being a part of a cast basically!’

Jo was a castmember on the first two seasons of the show and appeared as a guest during seasons three and four.

Explaining her reasons for leaving the show, she said: ‘Because Slade and I broke up. And so I really felt like the black sheep living in Orange County. 

‘I was always the girl that was rocking black nail polish and ripped jeans. Like I was a little more edgy and like, I just, I never really felt like I fit into like suburb life.’