For many of the women who appear in the various iterations of the “Real Housewives” series, the show is a vehicle to fame but not fortune.
Nearly all of them go on to become household names in one way or another, but beyond that their lack of, um, skills tends to be a limiting factor. Sutton Stracke’s estimated net worth is $30 million, so it’s worth exploring how she differentiated herself from the rest of the Real Housewives pack.
Early in her career, Stracke’s goal was to be a dancer. Born in Georgia in 1971, she studied at the Davidson Fine Arts high school, and she moved to New York, intent on getting into ballet. But Stracke soon discovered that she had a knack for a completely different set of dance moves. She married Christian Stracke, a wealthy financier who supposedly had a healthy inheritance to offer along with a lucrative career, among other things.
She first appeared on Real Housewives in Season 10 as a friend of the Beverly Hills babes, and she was quickly able to impress them with her burgeoning wealth. Having found her people, Stracke was all set to come on board as a regular cast member when a fly in the ointment surfaced.
That fly was her husband’s refusal to appear on the show, and he allegedly refused to allow their children to appear, too. That refusal helped fuel their split, which of course increased Stracke’s ability to generate the appropriate kind of controversy for Real Housewives.
Stracke quickly began moving on up in the Real Housewives world, and she soon became America’s ultimate party girl, in a manner of speaking. She actually does work, sort of, as a party planner, and she supposedly gets $100,000 for planning and hosting events.
Not surprisingly, Stracke has also turned her attention to high-end Beverly Hills fashion, opening a boutique called The Sutton Concept in West Hollywood. She’s promised that no client will ever be bored, nor will the shop be boring, which probably means the store is basically a high-end concept for plenty of reality show drama.
Real estate has also been a prominent part of Stracke’s portfolio, of course, and where there’s a Beverly Hills babe, there’s inevitably gotta be a Beverly Hills mansion to house her. In 2012, the couple paid about $7 million for their Bel Air mansion, which Sutton received in the divorce.
She listed it for close to $10 million and ended up getting nearly $8 million, and she went on to buy a different Bel Air mansion for $5.4 million. She also owns another mansion in Georgia as well as a spacious condo in New York, so she’s clearly not lacking for places to lay her celebrity head.
Party planning and various positions on high-level dance boards aside, Stracke is rumored to have a new love in her life. She’s currently dating Michael Mahoney, and the pair has been seen at a variety of social events that will doubtless lead to plenty of controversy that will somehow turn up as plotlines on future episodes of “The Real Life Housewives of Beverly Hills.”
