Anna Falchi was linked to the Roman entrepreneur Stephen Ricucci from 2002 to 2007. From the love struck under the spotlight to the wedding in Argentario up to the arrest of the financier, the love story between the showgirl and Ricucci dominated the gossip columns at the beginning of the 2000s.
The meeting and the courtship
It’s 2002. Anna Falchi is recovering from the end of her relationship with Fiorello and other disappointments in love. After several television commitments, Anna is chosen as the protagonist of the film “Operation Rosemary” and during the presentation of the film she meets the real estate agent Stefano Ricucci. The two develop a complicity but Falchi is not ready for a new relationship. But Ricucci does not give up and courts Anna sending her red roses home. “He was a knight, an apparition“, she will tell months later. So Anna capitulates and the photos of their first private dates become the covers of gossip magazines.
Public outings and gossip
The following months are intense for the couple who appear united and close-knit at various public events. While Stefano Ricucci is on the rise in the world of financeAnna – who is already called Lady Finanza – returns to the theatre, two years after the last show, and tours Italy with “The Venetian“, which achieved great success. Their love was constantly under the spotlight and gossip was rife so much that in February 2004, Dagospia leaks the rumor of a strong crisis between Anna and Stefano, but it is just fake news. On Falchi’s left ring finger appears a ring that smells of promise.
The wedding at Argentario
July 10, 2005. Anna Falchi and Stefano Ricucci get married in Argentario. The ceremony, however, does not go as Anna had always dreamed. The Bancopoli scandal, which involves Ricucci, undermines the couple’s happiness and some health problems of Falchi force the couple to say “I do” in Villa Feltrinelliwhich her husband recently purchased. The civil wedding is celebrated in the presence of a few guests, but the reception is not without VIP friends and many entrepreneurs who are friends of Ricucci. These are the couple’s last days of happiness before the storm.
The Bancopoli scandal
August 2005. Anna and Stefano Ricucci are in Sardinia to spend a few days of vacation in view of the honeymoon but the Bancopoli scandal overwhelms them. Ricucci is investigated for stock market manipulation and obstruction of supervisory authorities for the takeover of RCS, the couple’s phones are tapped and Anna, against her will, ends up at the center of the storm together with her partner despite being a stranger to the facts. “I can only say that I married an extraordinary man, honest, in some ways even naive, who perhaps happened upon something bigger than himself. But I know that his will win. battle and I will always be at his side to fight the cruelty of a system“, Anna Falchi declares to the weekly Novella2000 in December 2005.
The arrest of Stefano Ricucci
Four months later, things take a turn for the worse. On April 18, 2006, Stefano is arrested on charges of fraudulent bankruptcy, false invoicing and disclosure of accounting secrets and ends up in prison by Regina Coeli. Anna is devastated and increasingly distant from TV and the world of entertainment, but remains firmly at her partner’s side. “I won’t leave him alone“, she tells the weekly magazine Oggi, which dedicates its May cover to her. After almost three months in prison, on July 13, Stefano is released and hugs Anna again, but the worst is not over yet. Smiling again is impossible, Anna is still subjected to the assault of the press and her relationship with Ricucci definitively enters a crisis.
Ricucci – Hawks, separated at home
Christmas 2006. The gossip magazines talk about separation. Anna and Stefano live under the same roof but in fact love is finished. The real estate agent even spends the holidays with his ex-wife and son. For Anna it is a very hard period, which she will only talk about years later: “I was a show business woman who ended up involved in other news stories. I suffered a media massacre. I remember all these gratuitous attacks. They targeted me. I lived for months hidden“.
The announcement of farewell
June 2007. Anna Falchi chooses the magazine Who to announce that her marriage to Stefano Ricucci has come to an end. “I believed in the value of marriage, in the common project, I found myself facing things bigger than me, in a world where I was out of place, I had nothing to do with it. I finished the tears“, confesses the showgirl, admitting that she still lives in the marital home because “not financially able to sustain it“. For Anna Falchi a new course begins and distancing herself from her ex-husband allows her to return to work. In autumn 2007 she is back in TV with a role in the series “Piper” on Canale5 and participates in Dancing with the Stars, finishing second. The divorce from Ricucci becomes official in 2011.
Anna Falchi and Stefano Ricucci today
Seventeen years after their farewell, Anna Falchi and Stefano Ricucci have turned the page.
Practically nothing is known about the entrepreneur, while Anna Falchi – after a series of disappointments in love – is back to smiling alongside psychologist Simone Barbato. Since 2021, she has returned to hosting a television program, I fatti tuoi, alongside Tiberio Timperi.