Michaele Salahi & Neal Schon Speak Out on Their "Fairy Tale" Romance

Reality star Michaele Salahi and Journey guitarist Neal Schon are speaking out about their budding relationship — which caused a media firestorm after Michaele's husband Tareq Salahi reported that she had been abducted, when in fact she was in the arms of her new lover. But Michaele is alive and well and couldn't be happier with her new beau.

“It’s like a fairy tale. It is, it really is,” Neal, 57, told The Daily Beast from his hotel room in Tampa, busy on Journey's cross-country tour.. “I’m very happy, very happy after waiting for her for 15 years. Now I want to get beyond all this media hype that Tareq has put out there. It’s really quite embarrassing.”

So how long has Michaele been dating Neal? Since the 1990s and throughout her marriage.

Michaele, 46, launched to infamy as one of the White House party crashers before her role on Bravo’s unsuccessful The Real Housewives of D.C.

“I chose Tareq over Neal because I thought life would be less stressful living on a vineyard in Virginia," she explained to The Daily Beast. "Life on the road with a rock band … well, I thought I might not have been able to keep up.”

The couple admitted to keeping in touch through texts “for a while."

“Neal was like, ‘Are we going to do this forever?’ And I said, ‘No, we’re not,’” Michaele said of when she finally decided to be with Neal. “I began to see he really loved me. I had to begin to feel it completely – in my soul.”

Do you feel sorry for Tareq? What do you think of Michaele's new relationship? Sound off below.