She used to be a Playboy Playmate, so who is RHOC newbie Carmella Garcia?
She was previously married to a former NFL quarterback
Carmella Garcia is currently the newest cast member on Bravo’s The Real Housewives of Orange County, but who actually is she? Well, she’s no stranger to the spotlight, so let’s find out more about her.
She first made her appearance on the screen back in 2004, after becoming a finalist on WWE Diva Search, making it all the way to the final two before losing out to Christy Hemme, and wrestling just one official match before departing the company.
That same year she was also named Playboy’s Playmate of the Year, a title that led to her appearing on several episodes of The Girls Next Door, E!’s reality series following Hugh Hefner’s live-in girlfriends. She’s since popped up on shows including Street Smarts and featured in the 2008 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.
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These days, Carmella has swapped modeling and the wrestling ring for real estate, working as a broker and developer for The Oppenheim Group out of their Corona Del Mar office. She splits her time between Corona Del Mar and Rancho Santa Fe, and was introduced to the RHOC group through fellow Housewife Jennifer Pedranti.
Away from the cameras, Carmella was previously married to retired NFL quarterback Jeff Garcia, with the pair sharing four children together, daughters Presley, 18, and Faith, 14, and sons Jason, 17, and Jax, 15, before divorcing in 2020. She told Bravo that she is dating, as she has “dated somebody on and off for the last 10 years.”
She also had a run-in with the law n 2004 after a physical altercation at Tramp nightclub in Cleveland, Ohio. She was accused of getting into a fight with Kristen Hine, the ex of her then-boyfriend and future husband, retired NFL quarterback Jeff Garcia, with Kristen alleging Carmella kicked her in the head. Carmella maintained she’d actually kicked one of Kristen’s friends, who she said had come at her “full-force, swinging like a guy,” and Jeff backed up her version of events at the time.
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She pleaded not guilty to assault and the case went to trial, where she testified that Jeff had cheated on her with Hine, and that a string of nasty phone calls and threatening voicemails had passed between the two women in the lead-up to the fight. She was ultimately acquitted of the assault charge in January 2005, though she was found guilty of violating a restraining order, and was sentenced to a year’s probation, a $150 fine, and 24 hours of community service.
Interestingly, this isn’t even her first brush with the Real Housewives franchise, having appeared in a 2014 pilot for The Real Housewives of San Diego, a spin-off that never made it to series.
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