Roxanne 
The Valley’s Nia Booko is finally addressing the swirling rumors and accusations surrounding her marriage — and she’s not holding back. Following criticism from her co-stars who claim she’s “fake” and hiding things from the cameras, the 35-year-old former Miss USA took to The Valley: After Show to set the record straight.
“We’re not perfect, but we do our best not to speak negatively of each other,” Nia Booko said. She explained that her marriage to husband Danny Booko isn’t some curated act for the cameras, but rather, a genuine partnership built on privacy and respect. “If we have an issue, we talk about it and we aren’t like, ‘Oh let me tell Kristen Doute all this crap about Daniel.’”
Nia Booko didn’t mince words when defending her choice to keep some marital matters behind closed doors. “Do you want me to not be there for my husband? Do you want him to not be there for me? Do you want him to talk trash about me when I got mad about something…? Do you want me to go and rant about that and try to make him look like a bad guy when he’s not a bad guy?”
One recurring topic on the show has been Danny’s intoxication, but Nia Booko offered a different perspective. “If I’ve had moments where I’m in a place where I’ve had too much to drink and I’m not at my best, I want Daniel to be like, ‘We’re gonna go.’ We are each other’s partners. We are there for each other.”
She also made it clear that their communication style is intentional and grounded. “We are trying to be true to who we are and how we operate, but then we get called out for being fake or hiding things or doing it for the cameras when it’s like, I would be being fake to then sit in front of the girls and talk trash on Daniel,” she explained. “That would be fake of me because that’s not how I operate.”
Danny Booko echoed his wife’s sentiments, describing the accusations as “absolutely ridiculous.”
“We actually love and respect each other and don’t throw each other under the bus,” he added. “Just watch the first summer. Were we not vulnerable?” Danny reminded viewers of the couple’s openness about Nia’s postpartum depression and their battles with sleep deprivation. “Just because it wasn’t maybe as toxic as most other relationships and how they handle their things, they tried to put a target on us and say, ‘You guys aren’t being real.’”
However, not everyone in the cast was convinced. Co-star Janet Caperna questioned the couple’s double standards: “How can you give your opinion on everybody else’s relationship and point out what’s wrong with them, how people should be doing things differently? But yours, we’re not allowed to say a thing about. So it just feels unfair.”
Brittany Cartwright shared similar frustrations. “We would see the fights, and we would know everything that was going on, and as soon as the cameras would turn on, everything was perfect,” she said. “I felt bad for the extent of how bad it got that night. But I’m glad that I pointed out that I thought that they were hiding things because it was eating me up that day.”
Scheana Shay chimed in, admitting she once did the same in her own relationship. “You really just want to protect your spouse, and you don’t want them to get any hate, but by trying to protect them, you’re just opening up more hate from people.”
And according to Kristen Doute, some of the accusations may have been more about projection than reality. “It’s so easy to see now in hindsight what lens Brittany was speaking through,” she said. “I don’t think it had anything to do with you and Daniel at all. I think it had to do with her and Jax.”
As the season continues, it’s clear the Bookos are standing firm in their commitment to each other — even if that means facing backlash from their castmates. Whether viewers see it as hiding or healthy boundaries, Nia and Danny are making one thing clear: their marriage is their business.
