Andy Cohen and Former Housewife Carole Radziwill Have 'Reconnected' After Years-Long Fallout-quang

"It feels great," Cohen tells PEOPLE at Bravo Fan Fest 2024

Andy Cohen is used to hosting reunions between Real Housewives casts, but Bravo fans might be surprised to hear of a reunion he had with a Housewife from long ago.

PEOPLE caught up with the Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen host at Bravo Fan Fest 2024 in Miami on Nov. 23, where he revealed that he and Carole Radziwill had squashed their beef.

"Carole and I reconnected recently, actually," Cohen, 56, says, of the former Real Housewives of New York City star.

"It feels great," he adds. "Carole and I knew each other for years, before she was ever on the Housewives — for many years. I think I've known her more outside of the Housewives than I have in the Housewives. So it was definitely good to reconnect."

Cohen didn't offer any further information about his time with Radziwill, but the What Remains author tells PEOPLE that she was glad she and Cohen were able to talk after six years.

"We both came to understand that our disagreements had everything to do with the high-pressure nature of the show and very little to do with our friendship, which proceeded it," she says. "Andy and I are very much on the same page now, and I'm happy about that."

Fans will remember Cohen and Radziwill had a famous fallout after the RHONY season 10 reunion, which aired in September 2018.

Much of that reunion was centered on the fractured friendship between Radziwill and Bethenny Frankel. During the height of their back and forth, Cohen appeared to stick up for Frankel, prompting Radziwill to call Cohen "full of s---" for suggesting she bashed Frankel. At the reunion she asked him, "Are you afraid of her too?"

“It was very clear to me — and then later on, I think, the audience — that he was supporting Bethenny in this way that I’ve never seen him at any other reunion do that,” Radziwill, 61, recalled on a July 2019 episode of SiriusXM’s The Jenny McCarthy Show.

But in Cohen's eyes, he was just trying to keep the playing field even. "All I was doing was pointing out, ‘Yeah, you both have been talking s--- about each other," he said on an episode of Bravo’s Play by Play that month. "I wasn’t saying anyone was talking more s--- or not. … Don’t deny that you never said anything bad about this person, ’cause you both were talking s--- about each other."

"I thought it was very Trumpian of her, and I was very surprised by that because what show is she watching?" he said.

That comment didn't help things, especially as Radziwill had made her thoughts about the 2016 election pretty clear. "Trumpian is what Andy did," she tweeted. "[He] created a false equivalent. He said we both bashed each other 'all season.' Look at the clips. I was in the same outfit — a black top — [because] it was all the last episodes in interviews taped two weeks before the reunion."

Radziwill left RHONY afters season 10, telling PEOPLE in July 2018 that "my original curiosity about reality television has waned over the years and I am focusing on TV and writing projects that better suit my more steady temperament."

Later, in a separate post on her Instagram Stories, she asked, "If you were doing something that was forcing you to do things that went against your own value system would you walk away regardless of the pay? It’s a tough decision."

Once again, that comment sparked a reaction, this time from Cohen. "Carole’s post basically implied that she was leaving a really toxic situation. It really rubbed me the wrong way because I really felt like I had changed her life,” he said, in 2021's Not All Diamonds and Rosé: The Inside Story of the Real Housewives from the People Who Lived It. "She is not the person I used to know."

But Radziwill once again clapped back online. “Just another man telling a woman she ought to be more grateful," she wrote on X. "Housewives changed Andy Cohen’s life, not mine. And Bravo built a 100 million dollar franchise on the backs of women. Let’s not get it twisted.”

For years since then, the noise between Cohen and Radziwill stayed quiet — even when Cohen's friendship with Frankel seemed to dissolve. But then, in June 2024, Cohen made headlines after he called out Radzwill for allegedly providing an anonymous quote to New York magazine for a cover story they were doing on Cohen.

In the piece, the source — identified as a former New York City Housewife — reflected the trajectory of the series during her time on it. "The show went from silly humor about middle-aged women getting drunk and being delusional about their status and having funny, petty arguments, to Housewives investigating and doing opposition research and making up false story lines and leaking stories on each other and trying to get one another fired," she said.

She also referenced a point during Cohen’s baby shower in which Lisa Rinna told others present to “Dance for Andy and his baby. Dance like your f------ lives depend on it," calling the moment "cringe."

"That’s the dynamic," she said. "Everyone just dances for Andy Cohen."

On his SiriusXM radio show, Cohen insisted the remarks came from Radziwill. "I know exactly [who it is]. It’s Carole Radziwill, no question," he said, when asked by his co-host John Hill who he suspected was the anonymous source. "It’s not even a question that it’s Carole. It’s the only mean quote, and it’s the only anonymous quote. But it was so weird. I was, like, ‘Carole has said a lot of unkind things about me that she has tweeted and been quoted about.’ So, I was like, ‘Why are you going off the record here?’ It's so weird to me, I didn't understand."

Responding to the speculation on X, Radziwill wrote, "Hey Carole here 🙋🏼‍♀️ Someone can make a truthful observation & there’s always one short-ish dude waiting to be offended. At this point why would any normal person use their name? They’re all so vindictive which I believe is the point of the quote& confirmed by Andy’s nasty response 🙈."