Carl Radke and Kyle Cooke have come a long way since they became friends filming season 1 of Summer House in 2016 — but according to Carl, their friendship isn’t always even.
While showing season 10 newbie Ben Waddell his New York City non-alcoholic bar, Soft Bar, during the Tuesday, March 3, episode of the Bravo series, Carl, 41, got real about whether Kyle, 43, supported him financially with the project.
“We have some serious, like, sophisticated investors. We have people who work, or founders of non-alcoholic companies that have invested,” Carl shared, noting that his Summer House costar Jesse Solomon was among his “close friends and family” who put money into the business.
When Ben asked, “Did Kyle get involved?” Carl took a beat before responding, “No.”
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Carl, who has known Kyle for a decade, tried not to look too upset by the slight, telling Ben, “To be honest he’s got so much other s*** with Loverboy” that it was OK.
During a confessional interview, however, Carl got real about how much support he showed Kyle when he launched his alcohol brand, Loverboy, in 2018, noting it didn’t feel great that Kyle hadn’t returned the favor.
“I invested $15,000 in 2019 in Loverboy,” Carl claimed. “I didn’t have a lot of money back in 2019, but I just believed in him so much and I knew the power of what he was building.”
He recalled, “I really felt like there was something there.”
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Carl, who is now sober, confessed that when it came time for him to branch out on his own, he was surprised that Kyle didn’t offer up any funding. (Soft Bar officially opened in summer 2025.)
“I had hoped maybe for the same in return,” Carl said. “But [Kyle] was like, ‘I’m just not in a position to invest.’” Carl admitted that “the message it sends is kinda confusing.”
Kyle and Carl formed a bond while filming the first season of Summer House in the Hamptons in 2016, which premiered the following year.
After Kyle founded Loverboy in 2018, his then-BFF Carl soon came on board to work for the company in 2019 and subsequently invested in the brand.
In 2022, there was a shift in their friendship and work dynamic, part of which stemmed from Carl getting engaged to costar Lindsay Hubbard that August. Carl left Loverboy after being the VP of sales that summer but remained on as an investor.
“I’m engaged, he’s married and naturally there’s gonna be some evolution with the friendship. … I wanna find a healthy place for us as friends,” Carl exclusively told Us in February 2023. “I think we’ll find that but working with your friend — this is a warning and a disclaimer — is really, really hard.”
Carl and Kyle rekindled their friendship during the season 7 reunion, which aired in June 2023 and after Carl and Lindsay, 39, called off their engagement two months later, Kyle was one of Carls’ rocks.
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In November 2023, Carl returned to Loverboy to help Kyle launch its non-alcoholic brand of drinks. While the duo remained tight over the next few years, a teaser for season 10 of Summer House, filmed in summer 2025, revealed there might be some new tension between the two.
In fact, in the trailer for the second half of the season, Carl and Kyle get into a physical altercation on the driveway at their shared Hamptons house — and it’s very messy.
“It was a build up of the entire summer,” Carl exclusively told Us in January of the conflict with his best friend. “It’s a roller-coaster.”
Kyle chimed in saying, “It was a very unpredictable outburst,” noting he felt “misunderstood” all summer and the fight was the result of it all coming to a head.
Summer House airs on Bravo Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET.
