Anderson Cooper Revealed That Andy Cohen Broke His ‘Cardinal Rule’ When They First Met on a Failed Blind Date—It ‘Made Him Shut Down’
Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper continuously prove that they’re bestie goals. The CNN reporter and the Bravo producer have graced our screens every New Year’s Eve with their shots of tequila and jokes every hour leading up to midnight. But how far does their relationship go?
The two have fondly praised each other on their podcasts, radio shows, speaking tours, and during special nightly news segments. “We’ve known each other for years. But I would say in the last 15 years, we’ve gotten much closer because he’s been able to kind of guide me as I’ve been in front of the camera, and guide me navigating what that is,” Cohen said on the Table for Two podcast.
The Watch What Happens Live! host and the news reporter also go on playdates with their children. Cooper and his ex Benjamin Maisani share two kids, Wyatt and Sebastian, while Cohen is father to Benjamin and Lucy, via surrogate. “We don’t really talk about pop culture,” Cohen told Parade. “We don’t talk about politics. It’s so funny—the amount of people that say to me weekly, “What does Anderson say about this? What does Anderson say about that?’ I’m always like, ‘We don’t talk about it.’ We really talk about our kids and personal stuff.”
So how did the two really meet?
Did Anderson Cooper & Andy Cohen ever date?
Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen never dated. However, they met through friends who were trying to set them up on a blind date. On The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, the two friends recalled how it failed. “We had a phone call to set up the date,” Cooper recalled. “I was a young reporter at ABC, he was at CBS, and I knew within 45 seconds I was never going on a date with Andy Cohen. I imagined him on like a Bluetooth headset with like, gesticulating. He was all excited.”
“Andy violated my cardinal rule, which is he asked me about my mom within the first minute of talking to me,” Cooper explained, referring to his mother, late designer and socialite Gloria Vanderbilt.
“I wanted to date the Vanderbilt boy. I was excited,” Cohen responded. “I remember that something that I did made him shut down, so now I know.”
Related: Does Andy Cohen Have a Husband? His ‘Emotionally Chaotic’ Dating Life
Years later, the two bonded after they traveled the world together with a group of friends. “We wound up in this group that would travel together, [Diller] and his friends,” Cohen told The New York Times.
After traveling the country on the AC2 tour, and starting their residency as the lovable MCs of CNN’s Times Square New Year’s Eve broadcast, Cohen also confessed that he and Anderson Cooper hooked up with the same guy. On Watch What Happens Live! in 2018, Cohen said that he was “eskimo brothers” with his co-host. “I don’t know even know if that’s true,” Cooper responded “It’s true. It’s true,” Cohen said. “We just found this out a few weeks ago.”
As the two friends grow older, there’s nothing more special than their four kids growing up together. “We are these geriatric patients hobbling around chasing our children, but look it’s another bonding thing,” Cohen said on his Table for Two podcast. “I think what is going to be really interesting to us, as it develops, is being gay dads and as our kids start realizing more and more ‘Oh I have gay dads.’ I am so glad that Ben [Cohen] will grow up with Wyatt [Cooper] and that Ben with grow up seeing Anderson and Benjamin [Maisani] raising Wyatt and Sebastian.”
