The Real Housewives of Potomac’s Ashley Darby first landed in Arlington by chance, on a dinner date with an ex-boyfriend long before she got married. “I lived in Silver Spring, Maryland, at the time and he brought me to Arlington, and I thought, ‘What is this place?'” she remembers. “Years later with my husband, Michael [they are currently separated], I came back here … and had this full-circle moment.”
Now, the Bravo star says she has been a proud resident of Northern Virginia for going on 11 years and is raising her two toddler boys, Dean and Dylan, here. She also recently bought a new home in Arlington but is not publicly sharing anything about it because Real Housewives has yet to reveal details.
Darby loves Arlington and has no plans to leave anytime soon, she says. “I really appreciate the diversity of Arlington,” she says. “I grew up in Maryland. But I really do feel like there is an element of Arlington that encompasses so much more. I love how close I am to DC. I love that there are so many different cultures, like I go to Eden Center all the time, so I just appreciate how diverse it is.”
Despite the mega-success of the long-running Bravo franchise and its cadre of fiercely loyal fans, and the fact that the Potomac edition is now on its seventh season, Darby says she’s living “a normal life” and that her TV role hasn’t changed much of her usual NoVA routine.
“I love the restaurants, and I’m a big fan of Clarendon,” she says, mentioning that she used to go to The Clarendon Ballroom. “My kids love the parks, too. I think that the way the parks are maintained, and the investment that goes into the parks, is just amazing. There are so many things to do. There’s always a festival or a carnival, and there’s so much community involvement.”
The 34-year-old, who has over 638,000 followers on Instagram and over 234,000 followers on TikTok as of press time, is known for her transparent social media posts — and even Darby admits that she’s part of the “oversharing generation.”
Despite that, she says a lot of her new neighbors don’t realize she’s on Real Housewives. “Surprisingly, a lot of my neighbors don’t know. Don’t get me wrong, some do, or there are others who do but they just respect that this is my home. They don’t infringe on my space,” says Darby.
Darby grew up in Silver Spring as the oldest child in her family and had multiple jobs so that she could help her single mom make ends meet. She earned a degree in communications from the University of Maryland, College Park, and was crowned the winner of the 2011 Miss District of Columbia pageant.
A lot has changed since she started on the show in 2016: Viewers have watched her go through a very public separation that involved plenty of the Housewives drama that the show is known for. Because the show’s episodes air months after they’re filmed, Darby is often forced to relive the pain she’s experienced. “I definitely relive [things] because I’m human,” she says. “I wish I could say that I could turn it off and just be like, ‘Oh, that’s in the past,’ but the reality is I do have feelings. Things are said that I don’t know about. That’s probably the hardest part — there are confessionals and there are follow-ups that I’m not privy to, and sometimes that information can be hurtful. What I’ve learned in seven years of doing this is, if I didn’t know about it before, it doesn’t matter to me, so it doesn’t affect my day-to-day.”
She and Michael — an Australian real estate millionaire — closed Oz, their Australian-inspired restaurant in Clarendon in 2019 after being in business for four years. She’s now trying to get back to her roots — what she was like before she was married, when she spent more time on hospitality, philanthropy, and holistic health.
“I am getting back into my health and wellness,” Darby says. “I’m actually teaching yoga class in Toronto [for a charity event], so that’s something that I want to get back into. It was very helpful to me during a different difficult point in my life. And I’m at another difficult point in my life, so I’m [getting] back into my yoga. I would love to be able to connect with people in the community. That sort of being physical and being engaging with people for our health is really important to me, so that’s where I’ve got my sights set.”
Darby is also learning how to balance business with the daily duties of raising two little boys, desite whatever weekly drama may unfold on-screen. “One of the reasons why I have continued to live here in Arlington is because, if my life had abruptly changed and I felt like I didn’t have any more privacy, it just wouldn’t be that comfortable for me, so I appreciate that I can still just be me,” she says.
She’s happy keeping things as simple as possible right where she is — after all, sometimes all a Real Housewife needs is a “no drama” space.
Feature image courtesy Sophy Holland/Bravo
This story originally ran in our February issue. For more stories like this, subscribe to Northern Virginia Magazine.
