Dorinda Opens Up About Life After Her Husband's Death

Timing is everything. At least for new Real Housewives of New York star Dorinda Medley, who reveals in a new interview that she had the opportunity to appear on the show previously, but decided to wait until it was just right.

"I actually have been a part of this whole Housewives thing and all of these women for years and years and years," she explains to OK! Magazine. "The timing wasn't right at the time and then my daughter was at private school, I was a single mom. I didn't think it was right."

Then tragedy struck. Dorinda's husband Richard passed away, and though the experience was devastating, it also gave Dorinda the opportunity to begin anew. "I thought, 'You know what? I am turning 50. I've never done anything like this before. I'm sort of too young to do nothing and too old to do anything,'" she says. "So I thought, 'I'm going to cast my hat in the wind.' I feel safe and protected around these girls and I just decided to give it a go. Change it up a bit."

Dorinda has since moved on, and we even get a glimpse of her current relationship with boyfriend John Mahdessian, who she actually met through her late husband. "About five, six months later after he died, I ran into him and he said, 'Oh my God, how's Richard?' I said 'Well, he passed,'" she explains. "He said, 'Why don't we grab some lunch?' It really just developed as a friendship and after someone passes, you're not looking to get together with someone. You're rebuilding and he's been such a good friend and such a great companion and you know, three years on it's turned into a full-blown relationship and we're very close."

Now feeling blessed to have "someone kind and good" in her life again, Dorinda is especially thankful for the "rehabilitation" that RHONY has provided her. "I think after Richard passed, you get a little frightened of life," she shares. "You get a little insular, you're disappointed, and I'm actually quite a social person and I forgot how to do it and it forced me."

She's also pretty certain that her former husband would approve of her decision. "I went to dinner the other day with all my new friends and I looked around and I thought, it's so weird that three years on I've made so many new friends that Richard doesn't even know it and it made me both happy and sad," she says. "He would love them, but I thought to myself 'Richard, I've come a long way. You would love all these new people in my life.'"

[Source: OK! Magazine]