Check, please! Andy Cohen went on his first date nearly two months after welcoming his son, Benjamin Allen, but it wasn’t exactly a smashing success.
The Bravo star, 50, reflected on the sour experience during the Wednesday, April 3, episode of The Howard Stern Show, as his date was with a show staffer Chris Wilding.
Cohen revealed that he and Wilding grabbed drinks at The Monkey Bar in New York City on March 19, but they weren’t on the same page when the evening began. While the radio show employee admitted he desired a “romance,” the Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen host wasn’t interested.
“I said to him right at the beginning, ‘I am here because I want to be your friend.’ I was upfront,” Cohen told Howard Stern. “I just felt like I wanted to have a drink with this guy. I clearly went into this with a different feeling than Chris did.”
The Love Connection host then addressed Wilding, who was in the room during the episode recording. “I wanted to be clear with you in the beginning because you were in a position where you deserved that,” Cohen explained, noting that he tried to set Wilding up with his masseuse. “I set you up with someone who I thought was a great catch and I still do.”
However, Wilding had a different takeaway from the date and he called out Cohen for allegedly showing up late, drinking excessively, expressing little interest and being too forward about friend-zoning him.
“I didn’t expect him to be so drunk. He was looking off into the ether, looking at his phone. He was zoning, [like], when you’re speaking to someone and they’re not giving you a nonverbal cue or nodding their head,” Wilding recalled. “I felt self-conscious because I felt like I was really not wowing this guy. … We were talking and Andy took out his phone and said, ‘Is it rude that I’m ordering a Lyft while I’m talking to you?’”
Wilding added: “It was a very odd date. If it was a date with a ‘civilian,’ I would say it went poorly. The fact that was Andy, it was very cool. I do like Andy. The date is just a little sloppy.”
Cohen confessed that he wasn’t the picture-perfect companion, as he had a long day working and socializing. The Real Housewives guru also admitted that he had two drinks and ate very little at dinner with a friend before meeting Wilding.
“I was super buzzed when I showed up. … I had two tequilas, I had a little bit of an edible … and I left drunk,” Cohen dished, noting that he walked into a glass door after saying goodbye to Wilding. “It was bad. I was not happy about it. I raced into the Lyft from there. I was embarrassed.”
Although the encounter didn’t go as planned, Cohen revealed that he “did have a date last week” and he’s continuing to search for love.
