During the show, LeeAnne Locken seemed to imply multiple times that Cary and Mark first got romantic while Mark was still married. The couple has worked together for years -- Mark is a plastic surgeon, while Cary is his first assistant and nurse.
“Some people tried to imply that Cary was a homewrecker, and she stole her husband, and that’s not how things went down at all,” Mark tells Entertainment Tonight.
“We’ve actually known each other for 15 or 16 years,” Mark explains. “I was a resident, and she was a young nurse at the hospital … Then, I had been in practice about three or four years, and she came to work for me. The reason she did that is because I was doing a lot of complex types of reconstructive surgery that required an operative assistant.”
“Which is why I wanted to work for him,” Cary tells ET. “Not because I wanted to sleep with him!”
The couple says over the years, they became close friends, as colleagues do. Mark and his family even attended Cary’s second wedding, a marriage Cary confesses lasted “a skinny minute.”
“I don’t want to trash my first marriage or my ex-wife,” Mark shares, “but suffice it to say, I was not in a good place for a long time in my marriage. I think I gained a lot of weight, I drank a lot. I think I was just not taking care of myself at all ... I started taking care of myself, and I started losing weight, and I was kind of checked out on my marriage.”
LeeAnne's friend friend, Heidi Dillon also got in the Cary-Mark rumor mill. In one episode, Heidi scoffed, “Most of the women in Dallas got their rich husbands because, at one point, they were on their knees under his desk, right? That's what I know of Cary.”
“It’s certainly been implied that we were sneaking around,” Mark responds. “I mean, a lot of what was said was true: we did work together, and we did wind up getting together, and we’re married now. And you know what? Things like that happen. We did not sneak around and have an affair.”
“We definitely got together quickly after he got separated,” Cary admits. “But there was a line drawn.”
“If it really went down that way [as they say], my kids would hate her,” Mark adds. “That’s not the case at all.”
“They’re like my best friends,” Cary says of her stepkids. “This is the part that is so disappointing. We have children. That’s who’s affected by this ... I actually got a text from my stepson saying that he heard through the grapevine that his friend’s mom was on this show with me, just some random stuff, and I was like, oh gosh. You know?”
On the show, LeeAnne suggested Heidi might be quick to judge Cary based on her connection to Mark.
“Heidi is friends with Mark's ex-wife,” LeeAnne said. “I think enough people are still friends with her, who will never accept Cary because of how she and Mark got together.”
Mark and Cary say that’s a straight-up lie.
“My ex-wife doesn’t know her,” Mark says. “And she said she doesn’t know my ex-wife, even though it was said on the show.”
“It was LeeAnne setting her up,” Cary claims. “I guess people can say what they want. They can make up their own false truths, which I guess you kind of have to deal with when you’re dealing with ‘reality.’”
Still, Cary and Mark say the drama and rumors from RHOD have not hurt their relationship at all. If anything, it’s brought them closer together. The couple says they still feel like newlyweds seven years into marriage. And should the series be picked up for a second season, Cary and Mark tell ET they would be down to return.
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