The truth about Mary Cosby’s grandmother’s will, why she hasn’t spoken to her mom in 25 years

Did Mary Cosby’s grandmother have a will asking Mary to marry her husband?

On the very first episode of the first Season of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, Mary Cosby implies that she’s married to her former step-grandfather Robert Sr. because her grandmother Rosemary had asked for that to happen in her will. At the reunion, however, Mary revealed that there was no will or any written “receipts” of her grandmother’s wishes about this arrangement.

Mary later revealed in Season 2 that her mother had wanted to marry Robert Sr. instead of her, and Mary hasn’t spoken to her mother in 25 years because of their disagreement over this important life choice.

How did Rosemary Cosby ask Mary to marry her husband?

On Season 1, Episode 1 Mary stated that it was “kind of” in her grandmother’s will for them to get married. Robert Sr., who was sitting beside her for the interview, then quoted Mary’s grandmother as saying “If anything ever happens to me, Bobby, I want you to marry one of my girls.
 
At the reunion, however, Mary said that this was not stated in her grandmother’s will, and that there are no “receipts” or written documents asking for this union.
 
When a viewer question asked if there was a will or any receipts from Mary’s grandmother that she wanted her to marry her husband, Robert Sr., Mary replied “No. There’s no receipts.”

Andy Cohen then asked Mary to clarify “how was that wish conveyed?”


“Well,” Mary answered. “My grandmother told me, for herself, that she wanted me to take her place.”
 Mary says she told her granmother “please don’t say things like that,” and her grandmother replied with “You think you’re too good for my place?”


Andy then asked if Mary’s grandmother told Robert Sr. that as well, Mary answered “No.”
 
Andy asks how he found out about her wish.
 
Mary doesn’t directly answer, but says that the two of them “prayed about it for two years. We felt like it was God’s will.”

She went on to explain that Robert Sr. was twenty years younger than Mary’s grandmother, and so Rosemary felt like she robbed him of his youth.

Mary then repeated the phrase Robert Sr. used in the first episode. She said her grandmother told him that if she ever died she wanted him to marry “one of my girls” because she knew they would be loyal to him and treat him the way he treated her. Her “girls” included both Mary, and Mary’s mother.

Mary’s mother wanted to marry Robert Sr. instead of Mary

During Season 2, Mary Cosby got deeply upset at Lisa Barlow because she suggested she was going to Google some health advice Mary Cosby had been giving out. Mary claims that drinking sparkling water hardens the ovaries. Mary couldn’t bare having someone suggest they would fact-check information she shared and was deeply offended by being questioned.
 
It bothered her so much that she later opened up to the other women about the situation this “Google” situation triggered with her. She dropped the bombshell that she had not spoken to her mother in 25 years because her mother questioned the fact that Mary said her grandmother, and God, wanted her to marry Robert Sr.

The rift went deep because apparently Mary had wanted to marry Robert Sr. who was her step-father, instead of Mary because she was “next in line.” Mary says her mother cut her off after this disagreement, and that one of her three siblings, a brother, took her mother’s side. Her sister and her other two brothers are on her side about this. When the women asked if there was anyway for her to resolve this, Mary replied that no resolve was possible.

How is Mary’s marriage to Robert Sr.?

Mary often speaks about the happiness she has with Robert Sr., but there are a number of red flags with their relationship.
 
Because of the awkward nature of their arrangment, Mary has been honest about the fact that it initially took two-three years for them to be in a “loving relationship.”
 
Mary has tied her happiness to Robert with material possessions and financial security, but doesn’t really like him as a person. At the reunion, she launched into a monologue about their happiness that called marriages “horrible,” and cried over Robert Sr. buying her designer handbags.

“You can’t go through a marriage for 22 years and be happy,” she said at the Season 1 reunion, tearing up. “Like, every single Chanel, he’s bought it for me. And I don’t have to buy myself anything, and all my designer things, Robert Sr. has gotten for me. And we’re happy. We’re happy and you can’t say or do anything to take happiness away from me ‘cause it’s hard to get. It’s very hard to find, and if you could find that in a man, it doesn’t matter where he came from. As long as you’re happy and the man upstairs is happy with both of you, and that’s what people should know.”

They have been married for 22 years, and don’t sleep in the same bed, which isn’t necesarily a sign of trouble, but is evidence of more distance between them. Mary has also revealed that they haven’t been physical for the last few years of their marriage, although they were in prior years.

In Season 1, she explained that they spent a lot of time apart because they owned many properties and Robert Sr. was often traveling to check on their other houses. He also spent 6 months away from her in the early days of COVID-19 because he was too afraid to fly home.

In Season 2 Robert Sr. is back home, but Mary expresses that she’s upset that their son Robert Jr. is leaving the nest because she is forced to spend more one-on-one time with Robert Sr. She seems both annoyed and disappointed in who he is as a person. “I could be wrong for this but I would change Robert Sr.,” Mary said in a confessional. “I would just, like, change him, the whole person, to what I want in him that I don’t get.”
 
“You want him to say, ‘sorry,’ you want him to be passionate, you want him to just be alive,” she said about who she wishes her husband was.

What are the age differences between Robert Sr. Mary, and Mary’s late grandmother Rosemary?

As far as age, Robert Sr. is in the middle of Mary and her grandmother Rosemary. He is 20 years younger than Mary, and married her, who he calls “Mama,” when he was only 22 years old and she was 42.
 
Mary is 18 years younger than Robert Sr. They have one son together: Robert Jr. who is now 18 years old.

The family drama goes very deep with the Cosbys, which you can read about more here.