Valerie Bertinelli was once mistaken for a sex worker while on tour with Eddie Van Halen: 'They would not let me up'

Emlyn TravisWed, May 6, 2026 at 9:25 PM UTC

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Valerie Bertinelli and Eddie Van Halen
Credit: Ron Galella Collection via Getty ImagesKey Points -

Valerie Bertinelli says she was mistaken for a sex worker while touring with then-husband Eddie Van Halen in the '80s.

The One Day at a Time star said she tried to show the hotel staff her wedding ring, but they didn't budge.

In the end, she had to call Van Halen and ask him to come downstairs and get her and Alex Van Halen's then-wife, Valeri Kendall.

Valerie Bertinelli is remembering a time out on the road with her late ex-husband Eddie Van Halen that did not, in fact, rock.

The One Day at a Timeactress recalled getting stopped by hotel staff who mistook her and Alex Van Halen’s then-wife Valeri Kendall for sex workers when Van Halen was on tour in South America in the early ‘80s.

“I don't remember a lot about the '80s, but I do remember this story,” Valerie said on a recent episode of the Where Everybody Knows Your Name podcast. “Ed and Al, his brother, had gone downstairs and Al's wife at the time had said, ‘Let's go down and join them.’”

Bertinelli and Van Halen
Credit: Jim Smeal/Getty

The pair then made their way to the downstairs bar, where they hung out with their rocker husbands for a bit. When Alex and Eddie decided to head back to their respective rooms, Valerie said that she and Valeri chose to hang back at the bar and promised to meet up with them again later.

However, their plan was much easier said than done.

“Valeri… and I go to the elevator to go up to the room, and they're like, ‘No, no, no,’” Valerie said, waiving her finger. When the pair asked why they couldn’t go to their rooms, she said that hotel staff “were trying to tell us that prostitutes aren't allowed on the upper floors.”

The Hot in Cleveland star, who had married Eddie in 1981, was quick to try and set the record straight. “I was like, ‘No, no, I have a wedding ring!’” she recalled.

And still no dice. “They would not let me up,” she said. “I had to leave the elevator, get on the [phone] — 'cause there were no cell phones in the early ‘80s — and call Ed in the room and say, ‘Can you come down and get me? Because they won't let me up. They think Valeri and I are prostitutes.’”

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Ted Danson, who hosts the Cheers-themed podcast, joked that the hotel staff probably still believed that she and Valeri were sex workers even after Eddie rescued them from the lobby.

“They probably still did, just thought that Ed decided to come back and get this lovely prostitute [and] come back up to the room,” he teased.

To which a laughing Valerie replied, “Yes, so, I’ve been mistaken for a prostitute before.”

Valerie and Eddie were married for over two decades from 1981 until 2007. The couple welcomed their son, Wolfgang Van Halen, in 1991.

The Drew Barrymore Show lifestyle expert previously admitted that she wished she’d “been a better friend” to her rockstar ex in the year before his death at age 65 in 2020.

"I’m incredibly grateful for where we ended up the last year of his life, but I’m kicking myself that I wish I had learned what I know now earlier, so I could have been a better friend to him," she said on the Work in Progress With Sophia Bush podcast in March. "If I couldn't have been a good partner — because that was over — I could have been a better friend."

Watch Valerie recall her tour dilemma in the clip above.

on Entertainment Weekly

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