‘RHOSLC’ Stars Heather Gay and Whitney Rose’s Ups and Downs

Credit: Courtesy of Whitney Rose/Instagram

'RHOSLC' Stars Heather Gay and Whitney Rose's Ups and Downs

Bad weather forever — or not. When The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City premiered in 2020, Heather Gay and Whitney Rose were the best of friends, but their relationship has since gotten rocky. The Bad Mormon author and the Wild Rose Beauty founder are third cousins, but their connection runs deeper than a distant family relation. The duo have bonded through the years over motherhood, entrepreneurship and their upbringings in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. According to Heather, the pair first met when Whitney visited Beauty Lab + Laser for help with a chemical burn. Whitney later hired her future costar to photograph her for a boudoir shoot, and the rest is history. "Within five minutes of arriving at Whitney's shoot, I knew this was not going to be an ordinary session," the aesthetician recalled in her 2023 memoir, Bad Mormon. "As soon as I arrived, she showed me the shopping bags she had brought, overflowing with thirst-trap thongs and thigh highs. She had enough stiletto heels to make a stripper pole jealous and just enough kink to make me feel like I might be in over my head." By the time cameras started rolling, the twosome were inseparable to the point that costar Lisa Barlow gave them the nickname "Bad Weather." After a couple of years on reality TV, however, their friendship started to show cracks. The twosome hit a breaking point during season 3 when Heather refused to corroborate Whitney's claim that costar Angie Harrington told them Lisa slept with someone for courtside tickets to the Utah Jazz. Heather claimed she didn't hear Angie say that, but Whitney wouldn't back down — and the two nearly came to blows, with Heather pushing Whitney during a girls' trip to Arizona. The pair seemingly made up while filming season 3 of Ultimate Girls Trip in July 2022, but the détente had ended by the time they attended BravoCon three months later. "We were dear friends, and it seemed out of the blue just completely that you decided that you were gonna dump me as a friend. And that to me felt like that you were trying to create drama where there was none," Heather said during the RHOSLC panel discussion in October 2022. "And that to me feels like a reach." Whitney, for her part, thought the duo were on better terms before they attended the fan event, but she soon realized that wasn't the case. "I officially am never gonna try to heal with this group again," she told the crowd. "But we need it." Keep scrolling for a look back at Heather and Whitney's ups and downs over the years:

Credit: Courtesy of Heather Gay/Instagram

November 2020

The duo were thick as thieves on season 1 of RHOSLC. During the reunion, Lisa coined the nickname "Bad Weather" for the pair.

Credit: Courtesy of Heather Gay/Instagram

July 2022

The pals filmed season 3 of Ultimate Girls Trip in Thailand with Marysol Patton, Alexia Nepola, Leah McSweeney, Gizelle Bryant, Candiace Dillard Bassett and Porsha Williams. Heather and Whitney had already filmed their RHOSLC fights for season 3, but viewers wouldn't begin seeing them until the episodes premiered that September.

Credit: Courtesy of Whitney Rose/Instagram

October 2022

During BravoCon, Whitney told Heather she thought they'd squashed their beef in Thailand, but Heather seemed to think differently. "I just want Whitney to be happy, and when I found out being my friend didn't make her happy ... " Heather said. "We were dear friends, and it seemed out of the blue just completely that you decided that you were gonna dump me as a friend."

Credit: Gregory Pace/Shutterstock

November 2022

Whitney told Us Weekly that it hurt to hear Heather call her out at BravoCon for being the cast member that reaches the most. “That was a hard moment because I feel like she’s the one that reaches the most,” the beauty mogul explained. “But to sit there and have her say that, that did some damage. However, we are not in a good place currently, but I’m hopeful that in the future things can change. We have to be both willing to own where we’ve gone wrong.”

Credit: Gregory Pace/Shutterstock

December 2022

Ahead of the RHOSLC reunion taping, Heather told Us that things hadn't improved between her and Whitney after they took a "break" in their friendship. “I’ve been watching the episodes along with America, and every week it seems like we’re digging a deeper, deeper hole to get out of,” the California native said during an episode of the “Getting Real with the Housewives” podcast. “The problem for me is that I’m kind of redefining a lot of my relationships in my life because I’m becoming a different person. I just feel like I am starting to value the people that are in my life consistently, and that makes it hard for me to look at our friendship. The way that it just disappeared overnight, I feel like our friendship just went up in smoke and I’m not sure how to repair that.”

Credit: Courtesy of Heather Gay/Instagram

January 2023

After Jen Shah's sentencing, Whitney claimed that Heather started following her on social media again after allegedly deleting her in 2022. “So I get refollowed after her ride-or-die was sentenced yesterday … WILD!” Whitney tweeted alongside a screenshot of her Instagram notifications.

Later in the month, RHOSLC viewers saw the pair discuss their problems during the season 3 reunion, with Whitney claiming she was only trying to "put up some boundaries" for herself during their friendship break. Heather, meanwhile, claimed that she still felt betrayed by the idea that Whitney needed to step back from the relationship.

Credit: Courtesy of Whitney Rose/Instagram

March 2023

Season 3 of Ultimate Girls Trip premiered on Peacock. While Heather and Whitney had said they patched things up during their journey to Thailand, the first few episodes showcased plenty of tension between the duo.