Real Housewife of Orange County Gina Kirschenheiter was in Big Bear for New Year’s Eve. Kirschenheiter, her partner Travis Mullen and their combined six children have a “fancy dinner” tradition, where they get all dressed up, eat lobster and steak together, and ring in the new year with the ball drop.
Under the pretense of scouting out a place for family pictures, Mullen lured Kirschenheiter out to the patio and its twinkling lights. And then he pulled her close and started saying “all these beautiful things.” Just as she pieced together that he was proposing to her, he dropped down on one knee and asked her to marry him.
“Yes,” she said, and then immediately asked if the kids knew. They were in on it. In fact, one was quietly filming the whole thing.
View this post on Instagram
“After 8 years on television, what I loved most about this moment was that there were no cameras around except for my stepdaughter hiding in the woods,” Kirschenheiter wrote on Instagram. “I will cherish this unexpected, simple, beautiful moment forever. Thank you Travis, I love you.”
Fans of the Real Housewives of Orange County watched as Mullen and Kirschenheiter began dating in 2019. In 2023, they took their relationship further and started a real estate team together. Since then, the couple has done nearly $25 million, moved to eXp, expanded to another state and hit multiple conference stages, including the most recent Inman Connect New York.
Fresh off of her engagement and ICNY appearance, we sat down with Kirschenheiter to discuss working with her partner, the family business and what it was like to have Catherine O’Hara parody her in an angry moment on TV. Below is the conversation, edited for brevity and clarity.
What’s your best advice for couples who work together?
It’s not the easiest thing to work with your partner, right? It’s cute to be able to say, “He’s my work and life partner,” but it’s a little difficult to navigate, and you do have to work it out.
My advice is always stay in your lane. Travis and I have really figured out what works for us … and we stick to that … You need to identify what your roles are, and then you need to stay within the boundaries of those roles.
You can collaborate with your business partner and ask for advice always, because that’s a smart thing to do, but the onus of that should be on the person if they want advice. You can’t over insert [yourself].
What do you love about working with Travis?
I love that we get to be together a lot of the time. That’s really beautiful and nice. It is fun. Like everything we do. I love having somebody who is in it with me, so they truly understand. Everybody complains about work; when you’re able to complain to somebody who truly understands, because their complaint is the same as yours, that’s nice … it’s also really nice to succeed together. It’s really nice to feel like we’re building something together.
And also for Travis and me specifically, because this is our second chance at love … it’s kind of like our baby. It’s nice to have something that’s together, that’s truly ours because, Lord knows, we have enough actual children, so it’s nice to have something that feels like it’s ours, together.
You have six kids between the two of you, and you’re a Real Housewife, and now you’re in the demanding career of real estate. How are you handling the day-to-day and the mom guilt that goes along with being busy all the time?
Honestly, it’s so hard. It’s so hard, and it’s getting harder. I’ve had my real estate license for two years now, and I’m so fortunate and lucky that I’m finding success in it, and every year I’m getting more and more traction. I’m getting more and more business, which is so great. But it is also taking more and more of my time, and the balance is becoming very difficult.
I never stop working … The mom guilt is never going away. The mom guilt is so real. The one thing that I can say is I find it so rewarding that my kids have a lot of respect for me and how hard I work, and I’m very thankful for that.
Have the other Housewives been supportive of your real estate career?
They’re very supportive about my real estate business, and they’re very supportive about my relationship with Travis. I have felt so incredibly supported by those women. And I know that we’re notoriously known for being catty and fighting each other and whatever. But I like to actually say that, because it’s something that I truly feel. And it really fills up my heart that these women have never come for my career, and they’ve never come for my man.
You came into the industry at a really interesting time …
Is that what we’re calling it? Interesting?
I came in at the worst time you could ever come into real estate.
You did come in as the pandemic boom was chilling out, and then in 2024, we had the NAR settlement. So I’m curious, how have your first few years in this industry been?
I wouldn’t trade it, because it is a very difficult time in real estate. Things are so interesting and uncertain that it’s not easy. You truly have to figure out a lot. And I honestly think it is a good entry point, because you just learn so much, and you really have to work hard for it.
If I had gotten in the year prior and things were just flying off the shelf, I would have gotten this false expectation that that’s what real estate is like. And then when we crept into the next year, I think it would have been devastating.
I’m getting in at one of the harder times, which means it can only get better. For other agents who got in at the same time that I did, it’s like, if you can just figure it out, and you can endure it, and you can find success in the market that we’re in now, and you can hang on — I expect that it will be incredibly rewarding as we go through the next few years.
You’ve said you have generated all your leads. Do people tend to come to you because you’re on the show?
We’re out there doing all the things that everybody [else does]. I door-knock. There’s one area in my community that I regularly go door-knock and bring gifts — because that’s what you need to do as an agent. That’s the thing: There’s no easy way. There’s no express lane. For real estate, there’s just not. You’re either going to do it, or you’re not.
There’s like, this curse, this Housewife curse, I feel like, where a lot of people, they just put their name on a product or a brand … If you’re not there to do the work, you’re not going to get it.
My first clients on the buy side bought a home within my community. They did initially reach out because they knew me from the show, and they reached out on Instagram. They ended up moving down here.
I mostly sell my own community, and I have six kids in my community. I know every inch of my community, so we took them to all the amenities. We spent the entire day with them, and they ended up putting an offer in on a home. And now I consider them friends.
Do you have an end-game goal with real estate?
I would love to transition to becoming an investor. I truly feel like that’s when you really are getting in the game. I love production, I love helping people, but it’s kind of like Housewives. It kind of has a lifespan.
And it’s exhausting. It’s a really tough game to be in. So I think that for Travis and me, our end goal would be to try to move over into the investment side of things, and that’s probably the trajectory of where we’re trying to take it.
Actress Catherine O’Hara recently passed away. What was it like to be impersonated by her on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen?
Honestly, it’s so crazy to me … for me, it was Beetlejuice. It’s in the fabric of my childhood, Beetlejuice. So I just have always loved her so much … that was like, maybe a year ago, and I had posted it then … my dad sent it to me, and I was like fan girling out so hard … It was so surreal to me, that moment that Catherine O’Hara was parodying me. It’s just like, Oh, I’ve made it.
View this post on Instagram
And so I already posted it, and then I was so sad [when she died], because she’s such a legend and such an icon … So that was just very sad, but I’m very thankful to always kind of have that little moment frozen in time. And I’m also really glad that I’m nuts, and I called a grown woman a “sloppy Chihuahua.”
Go behind the scenes with Inman’s Dani Vanderboegh to get the answers to all your burning questions on the newest releases. Stay tuned to Real Tea, the intersection of real estate and reality TV.
Connect with Dani Vanderboegh via email, Instagram or Facebook.
