Bethenny Frankel and Dennis Shields met nearly 20 years ago, when he was dating one of Bethenny’s high school friends. After losing touch, they reconnected in 2016 and soon started dating. He then proposed to Bethenny in April 2018, but she didn’t give him a definitive answer on whether or not she wanted to marry him. Instead, she told him things were on “ice” until some “conditions” had been met and “changes” were made. She eventually broke things off a few months later, and after a few days went by, Dennis was found dead in his Trump Tower apartment from a suspected overdose. Due to religious reasons, an autopsy was never done, so his cause of death was listed as “undetermined”. In the ‘RHONY’ episode that aired in March of 2019, Bethenny explained ““It’s funny because he said to me, ‘Did you say yes?’ And I said, ‘Well, I love you and I can’t believe you did this but we have to talk about some conditions and some terms and how things are going to change’ — issues I’ve had with partnership and consistency,” Bethenny remembered about the moment. “It was all very complicated and it wasn’t what a natural engagement should be. So our engagement was on ice.”
