The meddling mom of “Owning Manhattan’s” Chloe Tucker Caine hijacked her daughter’s dating apps and, while pretending to be her, hooked — and catfished — her future son-in-law.
After a bad breakup, Caine needed a break from online dating, but her mom, Barbra Night, insisted that she waste no time wallowing.
“She was basically like, ‘Chloe you always pick the wrong guys, you need to get back out there and get back on the apps,’” Caine, 33, one of the star realtors on the popular Netflix series, told The Post.
But Caine was “done with men,” and told her mom, “I don’t have it in me to start over right now.”
Night, 71, who lives in Los Angeles, flew to New York to console Caine after her split from the musician/waiter she dated for six months, fed up with her daughter’s dating history.
“She’s always liked bad boys … and the more bad they were, the more she’d probably like them. And I said, ‘Come on, Chloe, it’s time for a nice Jewish boy,’” Night recalled.
“And she told me she was on the apps, but had no motivation. So I said, “Give me your passwords. And she said, ‘Ok.’”
Night would go on Raya, JSwipe, Hinge, Bumble and The League — and banter with potential suitors, pretending to be her daughter.
“And if she liked them, she would say, ‘Let’s switch over to text,’ and give them my phone number, where I would pick up the conversation and schedule a date,” Caine explained.
One night, Night, who has been with her partner, Errol, for over 30 years, couldn’t sleep, so at 3 in the morning, signed onto Caine’s Hinge account and came across an intriguing profile.
“When I found this guy, 6 foot 2, blond, blue eyes, Jewish, said that he read the London Times every Sunday and had a degree in physics, I thought, ‘hmmmm,’” Night recalled.
“And then I loved his photos. They were very lifestyle oriented. At a café, he had on a Panama hat, very stylish.”
“So I latched onto his photo where he was sitting outside and I said, ‘It looks like you like to dine al fresco,’” Night said. “We had so much conversation, he said, ‘I’m just about to ask you for your phone number.’ I said, ‘Well, here it is. Do with it what you will.’”
She then told Chloe to expect a call from Leon Caine, who works in finance and had just joined Hinge less than a week prior.
“So she looked and said, ‘Mom, he’s really not my type. I don’t like his photos,”’ remembered Night, a former fashion editor who founded the fashion consultancy and trend forecasting agency Trends West Los Angeles.
“I said, ‘Chloe, you’re crazy. Just do me one favor and meet him.’”
Chloe was the first to arrive at the restaurant STK in Midtown in May 2018 for her first date with Leon, and was pleasantly surprised.
“I was like, ‘Oh my God, he’s actually really good looking,’” she said.
About 20 minutes into their conversation, Chloe confessed that it was actually her mother he was messaging on the app.
“And he was like, ‘To be honest, now that I know you, you don’t seem like the type to say ‘al fresco’ in a sentence.’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, I don’t even know what that means,’” she recalled.
Leon, now 39, wasn’t bothered by Night’s catfishing, because “he comes from a very fun, quirky family as well,” Chloe insisted.
Although they “clicked on a lot of levels,” she wasn’t sure if he was feeling the same chemistry.
“He’s very British. So it was hard to tell if he was into me as well,” she said.
So when Chloe got a call from Leon the next day, she promptly phoned her mother.
“She said, ‘Mom, your boyfriend called me. He asked me out to dinner,’” Night recalled.
“And I loved that he said, ‘Should I make a reservation for 2 or 3?’”
That first week, the couple “ended up seeing each other almost every night,” and after those first few dates, Chloe knew they’d get married one day.
She said Leon, who grew up in North London, stood out from the other frogs she met.
“He would always call me an Uber, ride in the Uber with me, drop me off at home and then go home,” she gushed.
Mom agreed, and when she met him, a few months later, thought “he was 10 times better looking” than his photos.
The pair married in September 2021 and in December of that year, Chloe revealed the origins of their love story on TikTok with a video of them spending the holidays together in London with Leon’s family.
The post, which she captioned, “Your Jewish mother catfished your British husband on Hinge three years ago,” “blew up” and went on to garner 2.4 million views.
Chloe, who welcomed a daughter with Leon in March, followed that post up with one that included her mom’s initial Hinge conversation with her future husband.
TikTokers got “very invested” in the story, and hundreds of women have commented that they want Night to help them with their dating apps.
“I get so many messages asking for her help,” Chloe said.