Whatever Happened To Tan Mom?

Unapologetic UV enthusiast Patricia Krentcil made headlines across the world back in 2012, when she was arrested for allegedly bringing her 5-year-old daughter into a tanning booth with her. The New Jersey native was held in jail for seven days (she came out "pale after a week" of zero tanning, she told the New York Post), but the charges against her were dropped when a grand jury refused to indict the twice-divorced mother of five. The press dubbed her Tan Mom, and for good reason — around the time of her arrest, her skin looked so dark that she actually got accused of doing blackface.

Upon her release from jail, Tan Mom had two options: she could either lay low and wait for the whole thing to blow over, or milk the attention for all it was worth. She took the latter route. Krentcil used her new found notoriety to transform herself into one of the craziest pop culture figures in recent memory, but (unlike her tan) she faded from the public eye once her fifteen minutes of fame were up. She never gave up on stardom, however, and she's made numerous questionable decisions in pursuit of it.

What has she been up to since her highly publicized arrest? You really have to read it to believe it. Here's what happened to Tan Mom.

Back when she was still a viral fad, Tan Mom was made the celebrity guest of honor at a drag queen show in New York. The event was supposed to be a roast, but Krentcil reportedly didn't take the jokes and jibes that were thrown her way very well. The fact that she turned up steaming drunk probably didn't help matters. "She showed up for the red carpet and fell over," an eye witness told the New York Post. "She then got up and tried to attack the drag queen."

According to host Bianca del Rio, Tan Mom was so smashed that she had to be escorted out of The XL Club by security almost immediately after she took the stage. "We asked her what she wanted to drink and she slurred, 'I didn't put my kid in a tanning bed!'" Del Rio said. Luckily, organizers anticipated that their guest might get a little rowdy and had come up with a code word ("Christmas") in advance. "After about five minutes, we were just screaming 'Christmas!'"

Tan Mom fell over again on her way out of the venue, exposing her underwear to the photographers gathered outside. The camera bulbs flashed like crazy as the then-44-year-old pulled what Radar Online (who obtained the photos) described as "a bevy of sexy poses while spreading her legs and showing off her nude colored panties." 

Tan Mom likes to get serious about her love life from time to time. Back in 2013, the newly minted Wack Pack member reportedly filed for divorce from her husband, Richard Krentcil, after he "failed a lie detector test about infidelity on a TV show called The Test," TMZ reported. She never went through with the divorce, however — the pair was still legally hitched in December 2015, when they appeared on Howard Stern's show together.

"I'm fine with it," Richard said, revealing that Tan Mom threatens to divorce him on a regular basis. "Patricia has that personality. She's just very dramatic." Tan Mom complained about her lackluster sex life during her short-lived career in standup comedy, but that was all for show, Rich claimed. He told Stern that he and his wife had been intimate just a few weeks earlier, but that didn't tally with Tan Mom's account. "He's f***ing lying!" she screamed from the green room.

Tan Mom was then invited to give her side, and what she came out with was pretty shocking, even by her standards. The bronze-skinned viral celeb told Stern that she lost interest in her husband when he stopped making good money, and is only with him for the kids. "I'm sorry, I want that money," she said, adding, "He's so effing annoying. He's under my a** 24 hours a day."

Tan Mom returned to the headlines in 2017 when, in an ironic turn of events, she flipped out over a sunburn her daughter allegedly suffered during recess at school. Krentcil already had beef with the school (it was a staff nurse who called the police on her after her daughter mentioned going to the salon with her), and this incident pushed her over the edge. "She was totally burned. I packed her [sunscreen] and she came home like a french fry," Tan Mom told the New York Post. "After what they did to me, they didn't put lotion on her? This time, I'm going after them."

Krentcil told the Post that her lawyer was getting ready to launch a case against Lincoln Elementary School over both the sunburn and what she described as the "harassment" of her then-11-year-old daughter, Anna. "They always ask her, 'Are you OK [at home]?'" she alleged. "Teachers made fun of me in front of my kids." Tan Mom also called out the local police force, claiming its unsupervised interrogation of Anna back in 2012 was unfair. It's unclear whether her lawsuit was ever filed, but the fact that yet another UV drama thrust Tan Mom back into the limelight proved, if nothing else, that the universe has a sense of humor.

Another revelation that's come out of Tan Mom's association with Howard Stern, who reportedly pays the Wack Pack member out of his own pocket ("He keeps me alive," Krentcil told the New York Post), is that her home is... well, a little bizarre. In 2017, Stern staffer Memet (or "Lemet" as Tan Mom inexplicably calls him) Walker visited Krentcil at her home, and it was a day he's unlikely to forget anytime soon. "It looks like a haunted house when you walk up to it," he told Stern. "It does look like the house from Psycho."

The visit got off to a great start when Tan Mom was asked to say "Test 1-2-3" into her microphone, and instead came out with the following: "This is Patricia. I hate marriage and my exes come around and stuff like that. But I just want to elaborate that my landscapers and everything haven't done anything for me." Things got even weirder when Walker stepped over the threshold. During his tour of Tan Mom's humble abode, he was shown some antiques that are "from the war," Krentcil claimed. Which war, you're probably wondering. "The 1800s," Krentcil said when Walker inquired. "It goes back to the Holocaust." The less said about that, the better, right? 

Unscrupulous music producers will pounce on any poor sap who's become an overnight sensation if there's a few quick bucks to be made, which brings us right to occasional actor and shameless opportunist, Adam Barta. Known as the viral duet king, Barta has facilitated unlistenable tracks for the likes of Honey Boo Boo, and Octomom. He first teamed up with Krentcil in 2013 for "It's Tan Mom," her first single. The pair has recorded multiple songs since, and we've listened to them all so you don't have to. You're welcome.

Tan Mom's second single "Life of the Party" was met with just as much confusion as her first. "Remind me again why this needs to exist," one YouTube user said in the comments section of the mind-boggling music video, while another dubbed Krentcil the "Tommy Wiseau of the music industry." Next up was 2018's "Free 2 Be Me," which found a fan in none other than Jimmy Kimmel. The late night host revealed that he liked Barta's chorus, but wasn't so keen on Krentcil's parts. According to Howard Stern, Tan Mom was "furious" about Kimmel's review. "There is no song without me," she said. "What does Kimmel have, like a vengeance against me or something?"

Tan Mom's latest Auto-Tune atrocity is "Money Maka," which she'll be performing live at Damon Feldman's Celebrity Boxing 70 event in November 2019. It's going to be "a treat in the ring that will steal the show," she promised Page Six.