Real Housewives of Potomac star Ashley Darby has filed for divorce from estranged husband

Real Housewives of Potomac star Ashley Darby, 36 and husband Michael Darby, 65 are heading for divorce two years after separating and after more than seven years of marriage. The couple are parents to sons Dean Michael Darby, five, and Dylan Matthew Darby, three, and they will reportedly split custody of them.

TMZ has reported that “Online court records show ... the "Real Housewives of Potomac" star filed to end her marriage -- more than 2 years after separating from the businessman.”

Although Ashley Darby’s divorce has been the subject of much gossip on the Real Housewives of Potomac show and she has previously spoken about filing for paperwork, she hadn’t as yet taken any official steps. However when she appeared on ‘Watch What Happens Live’ with Andy Cohen she alluded that there would be a big update on her divorce at the RHOP reunion.

In 2022, Ashley Darby revealed that she was separating from husband Michael Darby on Bravo’s The Daily Dish. She said: "Almost eight years ago, when Michael and I said 'I do,' we anticipated sharing every single day together from that moment forward. Unfortunately, that is not our current reality. We have decided to separate."

"We are aware that there will be many speculative views as to why we have made this decision," she continued, adding, "People will be quick to assume that the causes were too much intrusion by reality TV into the most personal parts of our lives, age gap issues, cultural problems, or child-rearing differences."

"Pieces of all these may have affected our pure love for each other, but no one reason is the root cause of our mutual decision to go our separate ways. We are now both at very different stages in our lives and have different goals for our futures. We both want the other to achieve true happiness and fulfilment and feel that we cannot do this together."

In 2014, Ashley Darby married Michael Darby, she is 29 years younger than her spouse. In 2017, she told The Daily Dish that "Michael and I do have this age difference. He's 29 years older than me. And he has so much business experience that I think that he kind of forgets that I don't necessarily have all those years.”

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She went on to say that “And so, he has these expectations of me to be this strong, confident, self-assured businesswoman when really I'm still navigating the ropes. I'm still learning as I go. And yes, I'm definitely going to make some mistakes. So stepping into this role of being responsible for people's livelihoods and having budgets with a lot more zeroes on them has been a learning experience for me, to say the least, so it does cause some issues for Michael and me and really made us think about why we were doing this. We didn't do this restaurant to tear ourselves apart; we did it to bring us together.

Ashley and Michael welcomed their first son Dean in 2019 followed by Dylan in 2021. In 2019 People magazine reported that an episode of “Real Housewives of Potomac “ended by airing previously unseen footage that appeared to show Michael Darby seconds after an incident that a cameraman alleged to be sexual assault.”

According to People, Michael was charged with felony assault as well as misdemeanour improper sexual contact, the maximum punishment for which was 11 years in prison. However, on Oct. 4, a Montgomery County court dismissed the charges due to insufficient evidence. “