Valerie Bertinelli learned some things on Who Do You Think You Are? involving her great grandparents. Apparently the 54-year-old actress has had much greater roots than being the ex-husband of world famous rocker Eddie Van Halen.
The helpful fact-mongers behind Ancestry.com found something in the actress’ extended history which would, under other circumstances, make most of us fall to our knees in reverence to her Italian roots.
The facts revealed that the One Day at a Time and Touched by an Angel actress from Delaware had a great grandmother who gave birth to Bertinelli’s grandmother out of wedlock. The marriage had been delayed, and the host of the show gave a bit of suspense before dropping the secret on the actress.
Cost and other concerns had little to do with the delay in the marriage. Things like sex outside marriage were a bigger deal back then, as Bertinelli revealed.
Valerie Bertinelli learned that her great-grandmother had a child out of wedlock on TLC’s #WhoDoYouThinkYouAre : http://t.co/PT2OEj4YIb
— Us Weekly (@usweekly) August 14, 2014
Valerie Bertinelli reveals in the show that she had grown up mostly with her dad’s side of the family, and her parents Andrew and Nancy had been married for over 60 years. That alone is a shocking number these days.
Bertenelli acquired her love for cooking from her grandmother, who had always prepared large meals for the whole family. She had a great curiosity about her ancestry, and despite questions, no one ever talked about it.
It was Grossa Francesco, her great grandfather, whose death certificate held a key to the riddle that ran through Bertinelli’s mind for most of her life. He had died of a heart attack , probably related to the birth of his granddaughter out of wedlock.
It turns out that Bertinelli, a descendant of many who lived a life of hardship, was also a descendant of royalty. Apparently the scandal involved with her great grandmother was enough to have her removed from the royal family, and it caused a migration to the U.S. to start over with a new life.
It looks like after this episode of Who Do You Think You Are? , Eddie Van Halen was obviously not the biggest thing that ever happened in the family of Valerie Bertinelli.
[image via Helga Esteb / Shutterstock.com ]
