Ryan De Nino, the Staten Island businessman who appeared on Season 2 of Lifetime's Married at First Sight, has died at 40, a loss his family called "sudden" and his sister marked with a raw, grief-stricken tribute.
A family member told TMZ that De Nino died earlier this week in New Jersey. No cause of death was disclosed. The family offered no details about the circumstances, describing the loss only as sudden.
De Nino was 29 when he stepped in front of Lifetime's cameras in 2015 for the show's second season, a social experiment that pairs strangers at the altar and gives them six weeks to decide whether to stay married. Producers matched him with Jessica Castro, a receptionist from Manhattan, and the two wed on camera without having met beforehand.
The marriage was rocky from the start. Over the course of the six-week experiment, De Nino and Castro clashed repeatedly. On Decision Day, the show's finale moment, when couples choose to stay together or split, both opted to remain married.
That decision did not hold. By June 2015, Castro had filed for an order of protection against De Nino, making allegations of threatening behavior. De Nino disputed those allegations at the time. The contentious breakup played out publicly during the show's reunion special, and the couple eventually divorced.
Whether the order of protection was granted or denied is not clear from available records referenced in the reporting. The specific allegations were not detailed publicly beyond the characterization of threatening behavior.
After the show and its aftermath, De Nino largely stepped away from the reality TV spotlight. The Sun reported that he returned to private life as a businessman based out of Staten Island, and he did not pursue further television appearances in any publicly documented way.
His sister Melissa shared a tribute after his death, describing a brother whose humor and loyalty defined him to the people closest to him.
"Ryan was so d*** funny and witty. He was fiercely loyal to those he loved. He had a huge heart, always. I can't explain what it's like to lose a sibling."
She continued, calling him someone irreplaceable, a person who shared her earliest memories and who could not be substituted by anyone else in her life.
"Someone who's been there from the beginning and shares the same memories. No matter what we were going through, I loved him immensely. Life as I know it will never be the same."
The platform on which Melissa posted her tribute was not identified in reporting. No other family members or former castmates have made public statements.
De Nino's death leaves the basic questions unanswered, no cause, no specific date, no named location beyond the state of New Jersey. His family has not indicated whether further details will be released.
Forty is no age to lose anyone. Whatever the public knew of Ryan De Nino came from a television experiment that lasted six weeks. What his sister described, the loyalty, the humor, the shared memories, lasted a lifetime, and that is the part worth remembering.
