Kyle Richards never thought she would make 'Real Housewives' history

NEW YORK — Kyle Richards has a reason to celebrate.

Fifteen years in, she's earned the diamond-encrusted belt of being the longest-running consecutive housewife in Bravo's "Real Housewives" franchise history. It's a feat that when "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" launched in 2010 with Blackberries and Birkins and an all-married cast, Richards didn't expect. Nor did she plan for her journey to be at its current location.

"I never thought I'd be here 15 years for sure," Richards tells USA TODAY. "If I'm going to have a title, I guess that's a good one to have."

Days after celebrating Thanksgiving with her four daughters and ex Mauricio Umansky, from whom she's been separated for two years, the "RHOBH" star is at peace as she sits down for a wide-ranging conversation about "Housewives," reality TV fame, family drama and relationship tribulations.

Making herself as comfortable as possible in a leather blazer minidress, Richards is petite and personable, but she won't pretend that she knew this was coming.

"I've quit in my mind so many times," she says. She no longer tries to predict her future on the show: "Now I just roll with it and see what happens."

When she was tapped for the show, the former child actress figured the cameras would just follow her around being a mom. "That can't be too difficult," she recalls thinking. "I started watching the other shows to see what I was getting myself into, but I thought, 'Well, that's them. I'm not going to be arguing with anybody. And that one out the window real fast."

Now with the start of Season 15 (Thursdays on Bravo, streaming next day on Peacock), Richards returns with the experience of a seasoned pro after traversing a landscape that's constantly changing underneath her. Richards and fellow vets Erika Jayne Girardi, Dorit Kemsley and Sutton Stracke join Bozoma Saint John (who debuted last season) and newbies Rachel Zoe and Amanda Frances.

With interest intensifying on the show each season – and the pressure of having a celebrity stylist on the cast with Zoe's addition – its stars keep upping the glam ante. "I wasn't thinking about style or fashion or anything like that" in Season 1, Richards says. "In one of my first interviews, I had a plastic clip in my hair, and I was doing my own hair and makeup a lot of the time … Then people started paying attention and liking it. So I ended up opening stores and doing my clothing line and all that, but it's gone to another level now."

Richards is one of the more understated cast members, though her collection of Hermès purses may rival some actual Hermès stores. But "some of the times I'm watching" the show, she says, "I'm like, 'Is that a costume or is that clothing?' It's really over the top, which is not my style at all."

'Real Housewives of Beverly Hills' Season 1 kicked off with diamonds and drama

What's evolved since the reality show's humble beginnings (if there was ever a humble start to the extravagance of Beverly Hills) has been painstakingly chronicled in the Bravo-verse via "Housewives" reunions, blogs, TikToks, fan-led podcasts and beyond.

Richards recalls a New York event during Season 1 where "we all just wanted to leave. None of us were used to this," she says. "That was the difference between being with that cast and now. We were all on this together as Season 1 people, so we were learning as we went along, and when it got really intense – and it really did, and it was all very authentic – we were just like, 'I can't do this.' There was definitely moments we all felt like that."

When the show debuted, it was a sparkling but rocky road for the original cast: Richards; her sister and fellow actress Kim Richards; British restaurant mogul Lisa Vanderpump; producer and then-wife of actor Kelsey Grammer, Camille Grammer; Taylor Armstrong, then-wife of a venture capitalist; and Las Vegas hospitality heiress Adrienne Maloof.

The season of memeable moments and a now-iconic psychic – as well as allegations that Armstrong's husband was physically abusing her – ended with the Richards sisters in a blowup argument.

"Arguments with my sisters over these 15 years, that's absolutely the most difficult thing I've gone through," Richards says. Sister Kathy Hilton has since joined the cast as a "friend of," and Kim Richards has had intermittent stints as a main cast member and a guest. It's "hard to have personal family stuff play out in front of the cameras and then have millions of people watching, weighing in, taking sides, thinking they know things they don't know or all of it," says Richards, who notes the sisters are all in a good place today.

What's kept her coming back was the joy. "We had a lot of fun," she says. "Sometimes I think you do see that, but sometimes when there's so much drama, I feel like that gets overshadowed."

"Beverly Hills" has some of the more luxe cast trips for the ladies. Though Richards finds the trips to be some of the best show experiences, she acknowledges one of the most memorable international outings had an episode titled "Amster-Damn!" for a reason.

The Season 5 Amsterdam trip, where an explosive argument between Kim Richards and then-cast member Lisa Rinna unleashes at a group dinner, stands out in her mind "but not for the right reasons. Amsterdam was one of those moments where we all said we all want to go home," she says.

"After that infamous dinner, we all sat around, for those of us that were speaking to each other, and said, 'We just want to go home. It's too much.'"

Richards has been pushing for a Japan trip ("I've never been to Japan and I think that would be a really fun trip to do," she says), though the group is traveling this season to the Hamptons, Italy and Arizona's desert enclave of Sedona. One of those trips put a strain on an already tense relationship between Richards and Kemsley, which she calls "disappointing."

"Things are not great – I think it's pretty obvious at BravoCon, the distance between Dorit with Erika and me," she says. "There was a fallout that happened on one of the girl trips and it set us way back. So unfortunately we're going to have to work through that once again, which we had made progress and now we're worse off than ever. So it was upsetting because we're the ones that have been there the longest and the closest, and I really did not want or expect anything like that to ever happen." But for Richards, "there's always a way back" to the friendship. "I guess it's just timing."

Kyle Richards' kids keep her grounded amid Mauricio Umansky split drama

Mixed in with the glamorous international cast outings, the five-star caviar lunches and the designer duds, the family and marital strife that's long churned on the show has come to define Richards' recent seasons as much as it did her early years.

Her split with Umansky shocked the cast and fans alike, who rooted for the longtime couple's seemingly picture-perfect love story. Richards, however, says they still "get along very well."

"We always have. Fighting was not an issue in our marriage. It probably would've been better if we did fight sometimes, to be honest," Richards says. "We like each other and we respect each other. We want the best for each other. We're doing great with coparenting. I don't know how we're able to do this, but I'm very grateful because I see so many situations, even on our show, that are not like that at all. And being able to spend Thanksgiving or to go to a movie together where it's like, it's very nice. … I was so stressed about my daughters through this whole thing, and that they get to see that we're a family no matter what makes me feel better."

She claims the topic of divorce "literally has not come up."

"We separated and we're living our lives separately. I'm not just saying that – we literally have not had that (divorce) conversation, which is very confusing to a lot of people, but I think it's because we're navigating through this really well," she says. "And we're like, OK – and obviously you've been with someone that many years and we have businesses and properties and we're getting along – well there's been nothing to push either one of us to do that, so who knows."

The split has caused emotional turmoil, and when Richards stormed out of a Season 14 cast event and asked to stop filming, she thought she might not return at all. But she was "afraid of change," the change of leaving that would add on to the mounting pile she already faced.

"I don't think people realize how much time this takes up of your life and when this has been such a big part of your life for 15 years and you're close with not only the cast … but the crew, the producers who become family and just your every day in and out. It would've been a very big change and another loss," Richards says. "I felt like I had already gone through loss in the last few years, so I was nervous about that."

Her daughters – Farrah, 37, Alexia, 29, Sophia, 25, and Portia, 17 – keep her happy with their at-home game nights, and Richards is pushing forward with acting roles in "The Lincoln Lawyer" and an unnamed ABC drama, and has sold multiple hourlong dramas to major networks.

"I love being in my home with my daughters. We have our nights that we stay home that we promise each other we're not going anywhere. And we have our shows that we watch together … or we'll play games or do a puzzle."

Richards says Sophia turns on a "Real Housewives" marathon channel for her two cats during the day. "We'll go to check on these kittens and I will randomly walk in and see Portia when she was like 2 years old, 3 years old, or Alexia learning how to drive her car, one of my girls going out to college. Having those moments documented like that when I'm not good with taking pictures or videos has been amazing."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Kyle Richards never thought she would make 'Real Housewives' history

Reporting by Anika Reed, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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