Carl Officiated It, So It's Real: Summer House Star Shuts Down Kyle and Amanda Marriage Rumors

When Carl Radke, 41, puts his foot down, there’s not much room for debate—especially when he’s got legal documentation to back it up. The Summer House cast member didn’t mince words when addressing the swirling fan theories about whether Kyle Cooke and Amanda Batula’s marriage was ever legitimate in the first place.

Speaking at his Gonna Need Milk x Carl’s Not a Mess event in Brooklyn on May 26, Carl made his position crystal clear: Kyle, 43, and Amanda, 34, are legally married. Period. He was there when it happened. He officiated the 2021 ceremony at Amanda’s parents’home in Hillsborough, New Jersey, and his name is on the certificate. As far as the state of New Jersey is concerned, the marriage is real—regardless of what Reddit theorists want to believe.

But here’s where it gets messier than the vows themselves. Just months after the couple announced their split in January, Amanda went public with West Wilson, the ex of her then-best friend Ciara Miller. Suddenly, people started rewinding old footage, questioning timelines, and wondering what else about their years together might not have been genuine. Carl gets it. He’s been close to this relationship for years, genuinely rooting for them to make it work. Watching it all implode has been uncomfortable, especially knowing how deeply entangled his friendship network became in their drama.

What really sticks with Carl, though, isn’t the split itself—it’s the retroactive rewriting of history. When you’re on a reality show, every moment gets dissected and re-examined. Now that Amanda and West are together, old clips of his physical behavior toward her feel different in hindsight. Hands on waists, necks, heads—the kind of touching Carl argues crosses a line, particularly when the context has shifted.“The only real apology is changing your behavior,”he told Us Weekly, and it’s clear he’s not convinced West is taking accountability for his actions during the reunion.

Carl remains cautiously optimistic about the upcoming reunion episodes, though he’s watching carefully. He’s gotten closer to Kyle through all this and strengthened bonds with other cast members like KJ Dillard, Mia Calabrese, and Ciara. Sometimes a explosion of drama brings people together. But trust, once fractured by questions of what was real and what was performed for cameras, takes a lot longer to rebuild than a single apology ever could.

Part 2 of the Summer House reunion airs on Bravo Tuesday, June 2, at 8 p.m. ET.