One of the more colorful male counterparts to the all-star cast on E!’s Second Wives Club is Mohamed Hadid.
Cast-member Shiva Safai is currently engaged to the Jordanian-American real estate developer.
Mohamed is known for building luxury mansions primarily in Bel Air and Beverly Hills and Ritz-Carlton hotels.
And Hadid brings a high-profile element to the series, as he is famously the father of models Gigi, Anwar and Bella Hadid, who he had with former model wife and reality TV star Yolanda Foster.
His first marriage was to Mary Butler, and with her he had two very stylish daughters, Alana Hadid and Marielle Hadid who appear to be very close to their famous younger half-siblings.
Surrounded by wealth, beauty, and fame, and currently making news for criminal charges levied against him in Los Angeles, just who is Mohamed Hadid?
A former Olympic athlete (1992 Speed Skating for Jordan), Hadid already has two marriages, five children, and two reality television series under his belt.
He’s a Bravo network go-to guy and has appeared on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and Shahs of Sunset.
Hadid’s path to becoming a big-shot Bel Air developer and social darling of a heavily Jewish enclave in the area is quite unusual.
In a revealing Town & Country interview, we learn that he was born in Nazareth post-WWII in 1948.
The tale of Hadid’s humble beginnings are a classic American rags-to-riches immigrant story. He’s a Palestinian refugee with Jordanian roots, and alleged royal blood.
Add to that, Hadid is also afflicted with dyslexia. Despite the odds against him, as a young boy he and his family trekked across Northern Africa, wending through Egypt until his family landed in Alexandria, Virginia.
Hadid reportedly struggled academically — except in mathematics — matriculating at a North Carolina college, Shaw University.
He was then urged by his father to attend the more prestigious MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he studied design.
Interestingly his first earnings made as an architect in the USA were spent in Greece, where his first resort nightclub failed.
Then more failed start-ups involving luxury cars and limos followed. But this entrepreneur never quit and it was the early 1970s that saw Hadid embrace his Arab roots, using his language skills to barter and sell heavy equipment for the building boom back in the Middle East.
By 1980, Hadid was rolling in Gulf States dough. He used this to break into high stakes Washington D.C. real estate with strategic friendships and a series of high-profile deals across the country that even saw him lock horns legally with now president Donald Trump.
They resolved their issues and even dated a few of the same women, famously one of Trump’s ex-wives, Marla Maples.
Hadid is not only playing coy with fiancee Shiva on when their wedding will be on Second Wives Club, but he is also locked in a vicious legal war.
Armed with former O.J. Simpson dream team lawyer Robert Shapiro, he is fighting with the city of Los Angeles.
The reason? Depending on who you are, it is over either an eyesore or a stellar spec home.
The 30,000sq ft mega mansion at the center of criminal charges is known by locals as the “Starship Enterprise”.
Building on it was stopped three years ago over claims it included a string of planning violations.
Neighbors in this older monied hillside community were also left fuming at its scale, with some fearing it could cause the hill to collapse.
But the domicile we regularly see Safai and Hadid in on E!’s Second Wives is a different Bel-Air residence, called Le Belvédère (named for the eponymous Viennese palace).
More fitting with the neighborhood vibe, this over-the-top home in which Shiva hosts her castmates boasts a swan lake and 14 bedrooms.
Safai and Hadid have an enormous age difference — 33 years to be exact — but appear to in love and ready to face life together as a married couple.
What the future holds for their relationship and his legal woes remains to be seen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yioJKYs06yo
Second Wives Club airs Thursdays at 9/8c on E!.