5 Things You Don't Know About New OC Housewife Heather Dubrow

USMagazine, Monday, December 19, 2011, 4:57pm (PST)

Heather Dubrow is ready to prove to the Real Housewives of Orange County that it may not necessarily be blondes who have the most fun.

The brunette stay-at-home mom from Newport Beach, Calif,. is set to join Gretchen Rossi, Vicki Gunvalson and the OC gang when season 7 of the Bravo hit premieres February 7.

But just who is the brunette beauty who will shake it up with the gals? Us Weekly uncovers five need-to-know details about Dubrow below.

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1. Originally a New York City girl, Dubrow stumbled onto the West Coast and never left. As a musical theater major at Syracuse University, Dubrow (then known professionally as Heather Paige Kent) aspired to do Broadway, but when she was sent to Los Angeles for a TV audition, she never looked back. In the time since making her name in L.A., Dubrow has appeared in primetime on Married With Children, Stark Raving Mad and on the CBS drama That's Life.

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2. She met her husband, Terry, on a blind date. "We met on December 7 -- D-Day -- which [should have been] a warning," she jokes of getting together with her husband of 12 years, a plastic surgeon who offered his services on The Swan and Bridalplasty. "My husband and I are very down to earth people," insists Dubrow. "We're not defined by where we live or what we have. We're just normal people and we're incredibly grateful for what we have and each other."

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3. Dubrow epitomizes the "busy mom on the go." Parenting four kids all under the age of 8 has become a full-time job for the new Housewife, who says she's been on a "radical sabbatical" since giving birth to her little ones. But the housewife admits she still indulges herself in a little TV work now and then, joking that she "still [does] a pilot every year that doesn't get picked up."

4. She's a former beauty queen! Selected as Miss Greater Syracuse in 1989, the New York native was named Miss Congeniality at that year's Miss New York State Pageant, which is affiliated with Miss America.

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5. Gretchen Rossi and the girls have already put her through the Housewives' hazing ritual. "The first party [where we were all together,] we were pretty hard on her," Rossi told Us. "We just gave her a hard time and every time she said something we'd just be rolling our eyes or doing something, but nothing too harsh. We don't make her go running in her underwear around the street or anything like that!"

Real Housewives of Orange County premieres February 7 on Bravo.

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