Maria Menounos Says She Was Shamed by a Friend for Welcoming Daughter Athena Through Surrogacy: 'Just Crazy to Me'

01/14/2025 11:30 AM

Menounos welcomed her daughter Athena with husband Keven Undergaro in June 2023

Maria Menounos is remembering a time when one of her friends shamed her for having her daughter via surrogate.

The former E! News correspondent, 46, appeared on the Women in the Nude podcast and shared that one of her former friends once shamed her for not being able to carry her daughter. "They were friends. One of them worked for me for a while," Menounos recalled.

"This is somebody who was so sweet and I loved," she went on. "She said to my husband, 'What do you mean she can't carry? That doesn't make any sense.'"

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"And he goes, 'Her neurosurgeon – the top neurosurgeon in the world — said she can't carry.' And she was like, 'I don't get it. It just doesn't make any sense.'"

After she learned of that exchange, Menounos decided to stop being friends with that person.

"I was like, 'Oh I don't ever want to talk to you again,' " she said. "It's one thing to be judged by outside people who don't know and don't get it. But you actually know me, and you know what we've gone through. For you to even say anything so judgmental is just crazy to me."

Menounos welcomed her daughter Athena in June 2023 with husband Keven Undergaro.

In February 2023, a rep for the couple confirmed Menounos and Undergaro's joyful baby news exclusively to PEOPLE.

"Just after a decade of trying everything, we are so grateful to the beautiful family helping us conceive our baby," Menounos told PEOPLE. "Keven, my dad and I are all beyond excited for this soul to come into our lives. What a blessing."

Speaking about the happy news on Live with Kelly and Ryan after sharing the big news, Menounos said she's "so grateful" and "super excited" for her new addition.

"We've tried everything, literally everything," she said of her fertility journey. "They tried to get me pregnant, that didn't work. Keven had a surgery, that didn't work. He's hung me upside-down like a chicken, that didn't work. We did everything. But we got so lucky."

She then went on to thank Zoe Saldaña and Kim Kardashian for their help in her surrogacy journey.

"They both gave me their advice and people. Kim especially gave me this wonderful lawyer named Andy, he found me this woman Stephanie, who helped me find our surrogate," she said.

"We're just so so grateful because these people really help you bring life forward and without them we wouldn't be able to do this," Menounos continued. "Our surrogate and her family are literal angels, I'm so grateful that we're going to have this extended family that our baby will be part of and we're just so grateful to everybody that's helped us along the way."