Brandi Glanville just delivered a line that would have been unthinkable a decade ago. On the August 27 episode of her Brandi Glanville Unfiltered podcast, the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum, 53, admitted she prefers LeAnn Rimes, the woman her ex-husband Eddie Cibrian cheated with, over Eddie himself.
“I like LeAnn more than I like Eddie,” Glanville said. “Eddie just annoys the f*** out of me and all I remember is all the s*** he did to me. And she annoys me, too, don’t get me wrong. But we actually like each other.”
She added a timeline to the admission. “I feel like we both like each other more than we like Eddie. I don’t know. It took 10 years.”
How This Started
Glanville and Cibrian, also 53, were married from 2001 to 2009 and share sons Mason, 23, and Jake, 19. Their marriage ended after Cibrian’s affair with Rimes, 44, became public. Both were married to other people at the time, Rimes to Dean Sheremet, after Cibrian and Rimes met filming the Lifetime movie Northern Lights in 2009. Cibrian and Rimes married in 2011.
For years afterward, the fallout was constant tabloid material. In a 2021 op-ed for The Sun, Glanville described her earliest reaction to seeing her son sitting on Rimes’s lap. “I had this rage in my body, I really wanted to kill her,” she wrote. “I was so mad at Eddie for blowing up our life together.”
LeAnn’s Side Of Absorbing The Anger
Rimes has spoken candidly about what it felt like to be the public face of that anger for years. In a July 2025 interview with Flow Space, she reflected on the position she found herself in.
“I realized very quickly that there are a lot of women who’ve been hurt. I’ve been on both sides of that coin, I’ve been cheated on, too, so I know that feeling,” Rimes said. “But so many women don’t know what to do with that anger. I was a target that was just easily projected upon. And once I realized that, things got a lot easier.”
She said she made a point not to take the backlash personally. “I know what I’m responsible for in the situation and making amends for that. But the world’s pain is not mine to carry, and I think that really got thrown at me for a long time.”
That framing matters. Rimes isn’t denying her own role in how the relationship began. She’s separating that responsibility from the broader, often disproportionate anger directed at her by strangers, which is a distinction worth making.
The Slow Thaw
The shift didn’t happen overnight. Glanville has described the co-parenting arrangement evolving gradually into something functional, then genuinely warm. She shared in a December 2024 podcast episode that she’s spent Christmas at Cibrian and Rimes’s home. “I put my kids first,” she said. “I have the utmost respect for myself. Certain times, I actually pat myself on the back and say, ‘Oh, my girl. You’re doing this for your boys.’”
She traced the earlier stages of that shift back to 2021, telling the Hollywood Raw podcast that watching her sons enjoy time with the blended family made the effort worth it. “I think our kids had a lot to do with it because the kids love when we’re all together, and it’s so obvious. They’re so happy. They’re giddy little creatures.”
Even in a 2011 op-ed for The Sun, written not long after the affair, Glanville had already found a working peace. “These days, I love LeAnn, who married Eddie in 2011. She’s great and we all hang out together. I’ve forgiven her,” she wrote. “We’re going to be around each other forever because of the kids, so why not make the best of it?”
She was more measured about Eddie in that same piece. “Eddie and I still squabble, but it’s like the three of us are doing the parenting, it’s nice to have a third person and she’s usually on my side. But I will always have trust issues because of what happened.”
That last line is the real throughline of this whole story. Glanville has forgiven Rimes in a way she never has with Cibrian. This explains why she likes the woman he cheated with more than him.
She Still Can’t Resist A Jab
Glanville’s warmth toward Rimes has never meant she’s stopped taking shots at her entirely. Earlier this year, after rumors circulated that Rimes might join the RHOBH cast, Glanville couldn’t help herself on X.
“I hope it’s true about RHOBH I mean she got everything else of mine, husband, kids, boobs, Bronco, random illnesses she might as well just be a housewife and finish it off once and for all,” she wrote.
That is Glanville in a nutshell: genuine affection and biting humor operating at the same time, often in the same breath. Ten years of history with Rimes clearly produced real fondness. It also produced a woman who will never fully put down the one-liners.
Sarah covers Sister Wives, Teen Mom 2, Real Housewives, and Big Brother. She specializes in cast updates and recaps, with a steady eye for the details longtime fans notice first. Sarah has written about reality TV and entertainment for four years.
