Giuliana and Bill Rancic got married back in 2007 and introduced us to their relationship
via their own reality TV show. If you were a fan of the Style Network's Giuliana & Bill,
you may be wondering what's happened in the last decade. Well, here's the truth.
The first time E! correspondent Giuliana DePandi encountered her future husband Bill Rancic
was at a party hosted by NBC. Knowing that she was a huge fan of The Apprentice,
her then-boyfriend introduced her to Bill.
"He came up to me and he said, 'I'd like to introduce you to my
girlfriend but I'm afraid the two of you would run off together.'"
"True story."
The couple's first date, at Giuliana's suggestion,
took place at posh Malibu eatery Nobu. Bill told the magazine:
"I didn't know California at all, and I thought she was trying to take me to like
a place off the beaten path, because she was embarrassed [...] Little did
I know it was paparazzi heaven and she was walking me into the shark tank."
Bill told ABC News that a big part of that first date was
figuring out when they could have a second one:
"[W]e were making plans for three, four months out [...] We had our phones out and we were like,
'In July, I gotta go here, maybe you can meet me' and this was in March,
two hours into the first date. It was the craziest thing ever."
In late 2006, Bill decided to pop the question to Giuliana. He concocted a
plan to take her on a helicopter ride to view the Christmas lights as they flew over Chicago,
something she had long wanted to do. He told ABC News:
"We got up there and were drinking champagne and had Michael Bublé playing in the background,
then we flew over Michigan Avenue. That's when I got down on one knee."
But the romantic moment he'd prepared didn't go exactly as planned.
"But, I knelt on the champagne glass. It shattered
and even though it wasn't the smoothest move in the world, I still proposed."
Giuliana admits that the engagement didn't really sink in until the next morning, telling Today:
"It was incredible. It was a dream come true. It was even better than I ever imagined it to be."
Giuliana and Bill made the decision to get married in Giuliana's hometown:
Naples, Italy. In 2007, the couple exchanged vows in a 500-year-old church situated on the
Italian island of Capri. People noted that ever since their relationship grew serious,
Bill had accompanied Giuliana to church services every Sunday, and he explained
that they wanted their wedding to be, quote, "a very old school, full Catholic mass."
More than a decade later, the couple returned to that same church,
this time accompanied by their son, Duke. Marveling at all the ups and downs they'd
been through over the course of those years, including their struggle to have a child,
Giuliana wrote about the visit in an Instagram post, saying:
"Here we are...standing in front of the church we became husband and wife with our little guy
by our side. It wasn’t easy but somehow we managed to keep our faith throughout the
most painful of moments. What’s meant to be, is...and we wouldn’t have it any other way."
Although eager to start a family, Giuliana and Bill struggled to have a baby, which led them to
try IVF, or in vitro fertilization. In 2011, while preparing for her third round of IVF,
Giuliana got a routine mammogram. Her world came crashing down around her when the results
revealed that she had breast cancer. During a 2018 lecture at Elmhurst College, she said:
"It felt like the floor disappeared and I was just falling. My great,
amazing life changed just like that."
Bill admitted it was a, quote, "very emotional time," but stressed the importance of being
able to make decisions during a health crisis, quote, "based on knowledge rather than emotions."
As she told SurvivorNet, fighting cancer was something they undertook as a couple.
"I didn't go through breast cancer on my own,
you know. Bill was right there by my side. We went through it together."
After undergoing a double mastectomy, Giuliana has been cancer-free ever since.
Looking back, she believes the pregnancy difficulties they experienced at the time were,
quote, "all part of a bigger plan," saying:
"It was actually a blessing that I got that mammogram at 36 years old."
Making a marriage last takes commitment and a lot of effort, particularly when both spouses
are celebrities with demanding jobs that require substantial travel. Speaking with Fox News in
2018, the couple shared the philosophy that had kept them together for more than a decade.
"For us, um I think what it comes down to is that we're the same people
we were before all of this Hollywood stuff."
Giuliana went on to say that they were, quote, "very, very grounded," adding:
"We're married, but first and foremost, we're best friends."
Giuliana and Bill are partners in business as well as in life,
and that has also played a role in their togetherness. As she explained:
"I think that's really great, to be involved in a lot of the same businesses,
because it just keeps us together even more."
In an interview earlier that same year with Us Weekly,
Giuliana also underscored the importance of spouses reminding themselves that they're
committed to the relationship, whatever obstacles may pop up.
"You know, It's nice when someone tells you, 'You can't get rid of
me, I'm with you forever.' because it just shows, you know, It's just reassuring."
Not only have Giuliana and Bill shared their marriage advice in interviews,
they wound up co-authoring a book on the subject. In 2010, the couple released I Do, Now What?:
Secrets, Stories, and Advice from a Madly-in-Love Couple. At the time, their still-young marriage
was complicated by the fact that Giuliana was based in Los Angeles due to her job at E!,
whereas Bill was still working in Chicago managing the Trump International Hotel and Tower project.
According to a press release for the book,
I Do, Now What? features the couple tackling common marital conflicts,
like money, housework, how to argue without remaining angry at each other, and more.
"Is there anything about her that annoys you?"
"She's messy as hell. Her car -- I call her car the dirty diaper. It is- It's not normal, Larry."
As it turns out, the secret to the success of their marriage was far simpler than, quote,
"discovering the truth about some mystery." The couple wrote:
"Our marital success stems from small but significant efforts we've made to
improve our relationship [...] The result is a bond built on a
foundation of shared values that allow our marriage to thrive."
Television viewers received an intimate look inside the
shared lives of the Rancic couple thanks to Style Network's seven-season reality series
Giuliana & Bill. Unlike most TV show cancellations,
it was the stars of the show who made the decision to pull the plug, not the network.
Speaking with HuffPost in 2016, Giuliana explained why the arrival of their son,
Duke, led them to step away from Giuliana & Bill.
While admitting that those seven seasons proved to be, quote, "a very rewarding experience,"
she pointed out that leaving the show was about protecting Duke, saying:
"[W]e needed to pull back a little bit just because our son is 4 and he
was getting to an age where [...] I don’t know if I would have wanted to
show cameras at his preschool or him going through certain milestones."
According to Giuliana, opening their lives to television cameras hadn't
been an issue before Duke's arrival. She added:
"Some things have to be private [...] until [Duke] has a say, we want to just protect him."
Given that their respective jobs include attending glamorous events
and walking red carpets, when Giuliana and Bill come together for a date night,
they tend to keep things very casual. Giuliana told the Chicago Sun-Times' Splash magazine:
"Our date night is, 'Let's get in bed early, watch TV, get a bottle of wine.
That's how we connect. We don't put pressure on ourselves to keep things exciting."
Even though their date nights are low-key, Giuliana is adamant that she and Bill always
carve out time for each other whenever they can. Telling Parents magazine:
"It's okay to have that me time and it's okay to have that us time. So much of our lives is Duke,
but it's also important for us to keep our relationship healthy."
Sage advice, to be sure.
Staying connected via regular date nights is just one of the many ways that Giuliana and
Bill keep their marriage strong. During an appearance on the Rachael Ray Show,
the couple shared some additional tips that help them juggle their
relationship and their parenting duties as they raise son Duke.
In response to an audience member's question about balancing a career,
children, and marriage, Giuliana shared what she calls her "hundred-hundred rule." That,
she explained, means that when she's working, she focuses 100 percent of her energy into her job.
"I don't get kind of sidetracked talking to my mom, which trust me.
I could talk to my mom for hours at a time."
Then, when she and Bill come home,
the focus shifts to "100 percent on the family." Giuliana continued, saying:
"We did what we needed to do, now it's time to be with the family and you can
lessen the guilt. It's never going to be perfect, but it's a great start."
The "hundred-hundred rule" that keeps Giuliana and Bill focused 100 percent on their family when
they're not working features a very important sub-rule. When they're together at home and not
at work, they ditch their phones, placing them in a dish near the front door of their home.
"And that's it, when we- when I get home at night,
we put our phone in a basket, and we focus a hundred percent on family."
Bill explained to People:
"The minute we come home, all our phones go in there. That way, we're not texting or emailing
people at work. We're interacting with each other. It was hard at first, but we got used to it."
Guiliana added that when the couple come together after wrapping up work with their respective jobs,
quote, "we try to keep the quality time at a 10." As she explained,
the couple are insistent that their home life be as free as possible from work-related distractions
in order to focus exclusively on each other and their son Duke, saying:
"We try not to let [distractions] happen. When we're home, we're home."
Like all couples, Giuliana and Bill will sometimes argue. In an interview with Us Weekly, the couple
recalled their very first fight as spouses. Discussing their "little tiff," Giuliana quipped:
"You know it's bad when one of you goes to the movies alone [...] we
were supposed to go together [...] I stayed back, seething."
When Bill returned from his solo movie night,
there was awkward silence for about 20 minutes. It was Bill who finally broke the tension.
"He comes into my room and he goes, 'Is this what we're just gonna keep doing,
are we going to talk?' I said, 'Well, I'm just very upset.' And he goes, 'Well,
we better figure this out because you're stuck with me for the rest of your life."
That was something of an epiphany for her, and she admitted that it was,
quote, "nice to hear." Bill chimed in with a joke:
"That was just because she didn't sign the prenup — I didn't want to lose half my assets."
Giuliana and Bill's journey to parenthood was a long and difficult one. Their numerous
unsuccessful IVF attempts were well documented on their reality show, Giuliana & Bill,
but happily culminated in the 2012 arrival of son Duke, who was born via surrogate.
In a 2019 Instagram post announcing her decision to not make a full-time return to E!,
Giuliana also dropped some other news. She wrote:
"[N]othing is more important than spending time with my family, which we are hoping to grow soon."
She subsequently spoke with People and confirmed that she and Bill were, quote,
"open to everything," including IVF and surrogacy,
in order to welcome a little brother or sister for Duke, then age seven.
"And hopefully, like I said in my message,
hopefully, we'll have some good news soon [...] grow the family."
Looking back at their struggle to conceive, Giuliana recalled:
"I think that that was such a hard time in our lives, but at the same time, it was great."
Despite the difficulties in getting there, she added, the arrival of Duke made it all worthwhile.
"It was amazing, and it worked out for us in many ways."
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