Who Is Valerie Bertinelli's Boyfriend?

Life can be full of surprises, particularly for a former child star-turned-rockstar wife-turned-third-act celebrity chef. Yes, we're talking about Valerie Bertinelli (as if the title didn't tip you off), a woman whose true charm lies in her reliability, from her lack of cordon bleu skills to her Instagram confessions about struggling with weight loss to telling People, "I was supposed to die with my six cats and my dog ... and very happily live the rest of my years alone" (very #lifegoals for anyone who's so over dating). Despite that bold assertion, it seems Bertinelli's life has taken yet another twist — after her divorce from her second husband Tom Vitale (the first was from her beloved Eddie Van Halen, who died a few years back), she is now dating a good-enough guy named Mike Goodnough.

Goodnough, who might have been in kindergarten around the time his new squeeze started starring in the '70s sitcom "One Day at a Time," is a corporate consultant based out of New York City. He also runs an X-formerly-Twitter account called The Hoarse Whisperer where he shares political soundbites and blogs at greater length on Substack where he gleefully announced in a recent post that yes, he is dating a celebrity. (That being the aforementioned Bertinelli, of course — this story would have turned dark in a hurry if he'd 'fessed up that he was two-timing her with Martha Stewart.)

As Valerie Bertinelli told People, up until fairly recently she was firm in her belief that she really did want to spend her last decades alone (or with friends, or her son Wolfie). Romance played no part in her plans. What she did intend, though, was to do a lot of work on herself to get her to a better emotional place after coping with the one-two punch of the death of her first husband and her split from the second. She says she accomplished this through exercise, therapy, writing a cookbook, and spending time with her dog.

Once Bertinelli hit the point in her personal growth where she felt herself to be truly happy, she changed her mind about relationships. In an appearance on "The Drew Barrymore Show," she admitted that Tom Vitale wasn't solely responsible for making their marriage "toxic [and] horrible" but soon segued into gushing about her new man. As she told Barrymore, she finds Mike Goodnough, a man she seems to have met face-to-face for the first time in March of this year, "thoughtful and kind and ridiculously talented ... [and] gorgeous."

While the couple opened up about their relationship status at the same time, they don't seem to have coordinated their stories, which makes for a bit of an odd disconnect. Valerie Bertinelli told Drew Barrymore (via WKYC) that she started following Mike Goodnough's tweets in 2016 and they became acquainted sometime later on Instagram. Depending on the timing, she may have already split up with Tom Vitale (this happened in 2021), but they nevertheless kept things platonic for a few years while she worked on her personal growth. A few months ago, though, she says things finally got flirty, and then boom! Insta-love.

According to Mike Goodnough's Substack confession, however, he just randomly ran across Bertinelli in a New Jersey Panera and the two bonded over their love of chain restaurant coffee. Of course, the Panera anecdote seems to have been intended as a joke of some sort as his story rambles on to include a vignette where he sends her a photo of his cats that are really her cats — all a very coy and jokey way of letting the reader know that yes, he's been in her house, sat in her armchair, and schmoozed with her pets without her filing a restraining order. Well, we wish him the best of luck with the new relationship, however long it lasts. Even if it doesn't go the distance, at the very least her star power (plus the cat pics) will likely boost his subscriber count sky-high.