Aspen is a special place for the Umansky family: It’s their home away from Beverly Hills. It’s where Kyle Richards buys those hats and met Rihanna. It’s a scenic escape from prying eyes — and now, it’s where the news broke that she and husband Mauricio Umansky were separating after nearly 30 years of marriage. 

In the never-before-seen clip above from Buying Beverly Hills, which returns for Season 2 on March 22, the couple address the fracture in their relationship while on vacation with their daughters — Farrah, Alexia, Sophia, and Portia — for the first time on camera. The family is left reeling after the press catch wind of their personal drama even before Mauricio and Kyle have the chance to clear the air themselves. 

“We have had a hard year,” Kyle tells the family around the dinner table in the clip. “Mom and I, we’ve never really been apart,” Mauricio adds, as Farrah encourages both of them to “put in the work” to save their marriage. “I have to learn how to say no to certain things… because it effects my life at home,” Mauricio says. Later on, he shares his fears about not growing old with Kyle. “The thought of Kyle and I maybe not being together and separating is definitely something that is sad and it's hard,” he says. 

The conversation is a pivotal point for the family — and one they never expected to have so publicly. “[Kyle and I] weren’t ready to talk about it. We weren’t ready to even tell the kids about it,” Mauricio tells Tudum. “The truth is that I don’t know who in our camp sold that story to somebody. We were about to get into the river [in Aspen], and all of a sudden all of our phones just started going — we’re like, ‘Oh, my God.’ The [Buying Beverly Hills] cameras were coming the next day, so the audience sees stuff happening in real time.” The Umanskys only had hours to process the news ahead of an already planned business trip to Aspen for The Agency, Maurico’s billion-dollar real estate brokerage where three of his daughters currently work. “It’s not something that we ever hid for a minute,” says Sophia. “We couldn’t.”

“We were all forced to navigate the situation as it was happening, which is not necessarily fair to [Kyle and Mauricio], but it just made us all come together,” Farrah adds. “The only way to go through the process was just to say, ‘Hey, let’s not try to be perfect here. Let’s just be our honest selves and speak our truth.’ We’re not looking for perfect. We’re looking for honesty.” Some might assume that having difficult on-camera conversations might come naturally to a family who’s been on television for over a decade. But the Umanskys readily admit that they’ve got work to do when it comes to open and honest communication. “We got by really well for a long time as a family that brushed things under the rug,” says Alexia. “I’m grateful for the show for actually forcing us to have very uncomfortable conversations because I’m not sure if those would’ve really happened if it wasn’t for the cameras, which sounds so strange to say, but it’s true.”

For Mauricio, learning how to open up was a “liberating” process, as “pretending things don’t exist” was taking its own toll — and that’s when his daughters stepped in. “The truth is that these girls were the ones that came to me and said, ‘Dad, you’ve got to be more honest and vulnerable,’ ” he recalls. “When I started to let all of that out, it helped me grow. It helped me become better friends and have a better relationship with them. It’s helped me be able to get through what I’m going through with Kyle through my separation and be more open and more vulnerable about all of those things.”

And while Kyle and Mauricio haven’t made any permanent decisions about their future together (“I’m not in a rush to find out what the outcome is of that journey,” he says), the Umanskys are nothing if not united. “I hope people are able to learn both the good and bad from how we’ve dealt with our situation because the truth is that this is something that happens in every family,” says Mauricio. “But the way we all handle that and the fact that we’re all best friends is what makes me the most proud.”