Stern Show Staff Fights and Cries at Ronnie Mund’s Engagement Dinner

“It was like walking into Vietnam, it was insanity,” executive producer Gary Dell’Abate recalls of the evening

May 8, 2023
Photo: The Howard Stern Show

What was supposed to be a night of fun and laughter celebrating Ronnie Mund’s upcoming nuptials quickly turned into anger and tears at his engagement party in Miami recently. On Monday, executive producer Gary Dell’Abate recalled leaving the group of Stern Show staffers, who went on a bar crawl followed by a dinner, only to return to complete and total mayhem. “It was like walking into Vietnam, it was insanity,” he told Howard. “People were being separated, people were crying, alcohol was being taken off the table.”

According to Ronnie, Mike Pearlman is to blame for ruining the evening, starting off by insulting Ronnie’s drink of choice. “He’s walking around with a pineapple drink, it was bigger than his head,” Pearlman explained to Howard. “He’s walking around holding it like it’s a fucking basketball.”

But it was Pearlman’s accusation of him wearing the same Hawaiian shirt multiple days in a row that really set Ronnie off. “I’ll take you to my fucking room right now — it’s a different fucking shirt,” Howard’s extremely agitated former head of security could be heard aggressively saying in one clip.

“We are 10 feet from one of the most gorgeous beaches in the world and everybody’s arguing over a blue shirt,” staffer Derek Jones pointed out at one point.

Pearlman did patch things up with Ronnie, even giving him a toast, but when he reprimanded Chris Wilding for interrupting, things went south once again. “I was drunk, and I was overly sensitive,” Chris admitted of his own outburst.

The overall tension caused JD Harmeyer to cry for around 30 minutes. “You’re like the kid whose parents fight all the time, and you start crying because you don’t want to see your parents fighting,” Howard told the empathic staffer.

“He’s a good fucking friend,” Ronnie said in praise of JD. “[He’s] not constantly breaking my fucking balls.”

Despite all the conflict, Pearlman knew everything was fine later on when Ronnie interacted with his fiancée over FaceTime about the couple attending his wedding. “All Ronnie says is, ‘Wear your fuckin’ hottest dress’ and that was it,” he recalled with a laugh.