Dorinda Medley on Why She Initially Didn't Want to Join RHONY: "I Just Didn’t Get It"

As the story goes, back in the day, Dorinda Medley was a divorcée living on the Upper East Side with her daughter, Hannah Lynch. Hannah was schoolmates with Avery Singer, which brings us to how Dorinda, who no longer lives on the Upper East Side, got to know her future The Real Housewives of New York City castmate and longtime pal, Ramona Singer.

“We just became friends,” she recently told Refinery29. "She was stylish, she was quirky. She was exactly the way she is. She took me under her wing."

She wasn't just pals with Ramona — she also met Luann de Lesseps dancing at a bar mitvah around that time (oh, to be a fly on that wall!).

It was in those days that RHONY was in its early stages, and Dorinda wasn't quite sure about it: “They came to me. I was like ‘It sounds like the most ridiculous idea. They’re going to follow around women in New York?’ I just didn’t get it. Also, the timing wasn’t right. I wanted to just be all-mom at that point and focus on [Hannah]," she recalled to Refinery29. "It wasn’t the mode I was in.”

Dorinda Medley On Her Daughter Moving Out

Cut to Season 7 when Dorinda decided that perhaps it was the right time for her. "When I went on the show, I said to everyone, ‘Okay, I'll do it, but I'm only going out for one year, and I'll probably only end up being a friend.' ... The cameramen came in, they switched on the camera. I look at the camera I was like, I like the camera and I think the camera likes me," she said. "And off the races we went, six years on.”

And if she had never agreed, we wouldn't have some of the greatest catchphrases of our time.

Dorinda Medley Explains Her Shade