“EMILY MAYNARD is a money-hungry gold digger!” Those are the biting words leveled at “The Bachelorette” beauty by a relative of RICKY HENDRICK, the late race car driver who fathered Emily’s girl, RICKI.
The super-rich Hendrick family is disgusted by Emily’s appearance on the reality TV show.
“Nobody in the family is disputing the fact that Emily deserves to have a good man in her life,” the relative, who asked not to be identified, told The ENQUIRER.
“But the way she’s going about finding love on national TV is what the Hendrick family finds most upsetting.
“The entire family would have completely written Emily off by now if it wasn’t for their desire to have an ongoing relationship with Ricki. Out of respect for little Ricki’s father, the Hendricks feel that they have an obligation to make sure she’s always provided for. To do that, they have to walk a fine line with Emily.”
THE ENQUIRER reported previously, Emily fell head over heels in love with late NASCAR superstar Ricky in April 2002 when she was just a 16-year-old student at Key West High School.
The couple was practically inseparable from the day they met, a longtime pal of Ricky’s told The ENQUIRER, and Emily became pregnant with his child in late 2004.
But before Emily could tell Ricky the news, he tragically perished in a fiery plane crash while en route to a race.
After Ricki was born, Emily used the Hendrick’s family connections to NASCAR to advance her broadcasting career. She landed a gig hosting the Speed Channel’s podcast “Emily on the Scene” in 2006, and then moved on to host the nationally syndicated series “3 Wide Life.”
“Emily may come across as a sweet and sometimes shy country bumpkin, but she’s made it pretty evident that she wants to be in the national spotlight, and she’ll go to great lengths to get there,” said the Hendrick relative.
“She also has very expensive tastes and will make sure the man she gets her hook into has a lot of money!”
Sources close to the family say Emily, 26, got a taste of the high life when she dated Ricky, whose family is worth close to $1 billion thanks to Hendrick Automotive Group, which operates more than 60 car dealerships, and Hendrick Motorsports, which owns the racing teams of Jeff Gordon, Jimmie Johnson and Dale Earnhardt Jr.
“The Hendrick family is affluent and well-respected, and they believe it’s trashy for Emily to be dangling herself out there on national TV like a piece of meat for a bunch of men to fight over,” added another source.
“They also worry how this exposure will affect little Ricki. She’s their biggest concern right now.”
