The couple who host HGTV's Flip or Flop—and who had Orange County deputies out to their Yorba Linda home in May because of an argument capped by the husband being “a possibly suicidal male with a gun”—have separated.
TMZ has the scoop about Tarek and Christina El Moussa, who “portray the chipper, nearly perfect all-American couple on TV.”
Their show, which premiered in April 2015, has the Realtors couple buying, fixing and re-selling homes before cameras.
They got the gig after the husband sent a demo reel to HGTV. During season one, they were reportedly paid $10,000 an episode for 13 episodes where a different home was bought, fixed up and sold during each program.
Eleven deputies and a helicopter showed up for the domestic dispute in May that had witnesses claiming Tarek grabbed a gun from his safe, ran out the back door and fleed down a hiking trail.
Shortly after, Christina ran out of the house crying and shaking, TMZ reports.
Within minutes, the helicopter spotted Tarek on a trail, deputies told him to drop his weapon and he complied, explaining he had no intention of hurting himself. The gun was to protect against mountain lions and rattlesnakes, but deputies back at the house seized five weapons, including an AR-15, TMZ reports.
The El Moussas have called the incident an “unfortunate misunderstanding.”
They say they need to separate to reevaluate their marriage, adding that they are committed to co-parenting and continuing “our professional life together.”
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.