Getty Alex McCord in 2014
Real Housewives of New York alum Alex McCord exited the show after Season 4, but it looks like she’s been up to a lot since then.
On July 20, 2020, McCord announced on Instagram that she had received an award for her research in psychology. According to Bravo, McCord earned a Master of Professional Psychology from the University of New England in Armidale, Australia in May. In her most recent Instagram post, the caption read, “Thrilled that my research on which my first peer-reviewed journal article was based has also won a national award – Elsie Harwood Award by Australian Psychological Society for excellence in aging research for an Honours or Graduate thesis. (And just got ethics approval for the next project!)”
According to its website, the Australian Psychological Society’s Elsie Harwood Award “aims to raise awareness in the field of psychology and ageing and to encourage students to carry out research in this field.” According to Bravo, in May 2020, McCord was also recognized as a Vice-Chancellor’s Scholar “in recognition of outstanding endeavour and excellence in academic performance at the University of New England.”
McCord And Her Family Have Moved To Australia
It looks like McCord is no longer stuck in Brooklyn with the mean girls from high school, as she’s since moved to Australia with her husband and two children in 2014, according to Bravo. McCord currently lives in New South Wales, Australia, and the family has traded reality TV for different careers entirely. According to Bravo, McCord’s husband, Simon Van Kempen, decided to go to law school, and she got a degree in psychology.
In 2017, McCord explained to Bravo that the reason the family moved there was so that they could be closer to Van Kempen’s mother and his siblings. “We are now about three minutes away in a couple of different directions from all of Simon’s family,” McCord said to Bravo, “That’s something we never had in New York, because my family is all from Dallas, and Simon’s family was obviously in Australia. We haven’t had that before, and it’s a learning experience. Our kids have cousins the same age, we have in-laws the same age, and you know how you can choose your friends, and you can’t choose your family? This is a huge learning curve to spend time together and enjoy each other but also to learn how to navigate those relationships.”
McCord Still Keeps In Touch With Some Of Her Former Castmates
Just because McCord and her family are halfway across the world right now doesn’t mean that she has forgotten her old castmates. In May 2017, McCord gave an update to Bravo about which of her former costars she keeps in touch with. “I keep in touch with some of my former castmates. I’m a really terrible correspondent, but a lot of them are pretty good, so they’ll email me once or twice a year and we’ll have a little back-and-forth,” McCord told Bravo, “Jill [Zarin]’s a great pen pal. I’ve talked to Sonja [Morgan], Ramona, Andy [Cohen].”
However, there is one friend McCord doesn’t keep in touch with much anymore, and that’s Bethenny Frankel. “I keep in touch with Bethenny the least,” McCord said to Bravo, “I definitely haven’t talked to her since we moved.”
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