Bethenny Frankel Reconciles With Stepfather Who Raised Her; After 23 Years!

May 18 2012, Published 11:00 a.m. ET

Bethenny Frankel has made no bones about the traumatic childhood she was subjected to, and hasn’t spoken to her mother Bernadette for years as a result. She also had no relationship with her father, legendary horse trainer Bobby Frankel, up until his death two years ago from cancer. She was raised from age two by her stepfather John Parisella, but had been estranged from him since her teens.

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However, in a trailer for the next episode of Bethenny Ever After, obtained by RadarOnline.com, the 41-year-old reveals that she has reconciled with John after being touched by his loyalty towards her.

In the clip, she is seen discussing her birth father Bobby over dinner, but the topic quickly moves to the stepfather.

"John is my father! I never lived a day with Bobby Frankel," she says.

Then switching to a monologue interview for the show she says: "I called my stepfather Dad, and referred to my real father as ‘Bobby.’"

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Cutting back to the dinner, a clearly passionate Bethenny is telling her dining companions that she had dinner with John, recently.

"I hadn’t seen him… had a relationship with him since I was 18," the mother-of-one explains. "But he’s never said anything negative about me in the press like my mother and when I spoke to him he was very sentimental about my childhood."

And she added that John told her that he felt responsible for the way she is today.

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"I wanted him to know that, you know, some f***ed up stuff happened, he was a hustler, there was some stuff he did to my mother that was not great but before that, he raised me as his own,' she says.

"I wanted to validate that, have it acknowledged, you know ‘you were the only father I ever had in my life.’ And it was really nice."

Even though Bethenny has started mending some family fences it's highly unlikely Bernadette is on the top of her reconciliation list. As previously reported, she’s angry at her mother, and has threatened to never speak to her again!