“Summer House”’s Carl Radke Rejoins Loverboy to Launch Non-Alcoholic Teas with Kyle Cooke: 'Totally New Chapter'

The pair spoke with PEOPLE exclusively about working together again on the new booze-free beverages, as Radke approaches three years of sobriety

Carl Radke is a Loverboy once again.

After parting ways with the beverage brand earlier this year, Radke has rejoined the company founded by his Summer House castmate Kyle Cooke to launch a product close to his heart.

Radke, who’s been open about his sobriety journey and struggles with alcohol and partying, is working with Cooke on a new line of non-alcoholic Loverboy sparkling hard teas. Two flavors, white tea peach and lemon iced tea, are available on DrinkLoverboy.com starting Tuesday.

In an exclusive interview, Cooke tells PEOPLE he remembers discussing the idea with Radke (who served as the brand’s VP of sales before resigning in February) while filming season 7 of Summer House.

“From an authenticity standpoint, imagine selling something that you're not a consumer of,” Cooke says of Loverboy's original hard teas. “And Carl would tell me that it almost felt awkward to be at some of these Loverboy events with a Red Bull or a non-alc beer in his hand.”

When Cooke approached Radke about the launch this summer, he told him, "We're not going to overthink it. We're going to take two of our bestsellers on the sparkling hard tea side, and strip out the alcohol."

It was important for them to inject the new teas with the same sense of fun fans expect from the brand and their hit Bravo show, which has followed the antics of Cooke, his wife Amanda Batula, Radke and a rotating cast of Hamptons housemates since 2017.

“People always ask me, ‘How are you still having fun but not drinking?’” Radke tells PEOPLE. “I've gotten more comfortable over time just being in social environments, but the key for me is having something in my hand, something that helps you feel like you're a part of it.”

Related: Summer House's Carl Radke Doesn't Think Lindsay Hubbard Was 'Blindsided' by Their Broken Engagement (Exclusive)

Cooke adds that Loverboy’s colorful cans still look the part — whether they’re alcoholic or not.

“No one's going to look at you weird if you're at a party holding this,” he says. “I think that's the point. It's no longer about standing out like a sore thumb. It's no longer about having really generic options and feeling like you aren't partaking if you're holding a bottle of Poland Spring.”

In January, Radke will celebrate three years of sobriety. The 2020 death of his brother, who struggled with addiction and mental health issues, inspired him to seek help.

Radke says he’s “beyond proud” to stand behind the new product, especially since people have credited him with inspiring them to make changes in their own lives.

For Cooke, it’s also a chance for him and Batula (Loverboy’s creative director) to get “the band back together” after he and Radke had a falling out on the most recent season of Summer House.

“It has been kind of a wild ride, and obviously we do it very publicly,” Cooke says. “And there's moments that I have enormous amounts of regret around us in terms of how I handle myself in season 7. But look, long before Loverboy, we started filming this TV show. And to have three of the original cast members kind of back together, working on something that gives us a much bigger purpose ... I mean, that's kind of the vision I sold Carl on from the get-go.”

In the show’s last season, Cooke suggested that Radke’s relationship with former fiancée Lindsay Hubbard was negatively affecting his work performance. The pair called off their engagement in September.

Asked whether the breakup changed the dynamic of their friendship, Cooke says, “From my perspective, absolutely. I mean, the door went from being open a crack this summer to kind of being wide open this fall.”

“Regardless of what happened to Lindsay and I, I was still taking this opportunity incredibly seriously,” Radke says. “I was very focused on trying to find a next chapter of my career regardless of where my relationship was. So Kyle and I started the summer in a great place, working on this project, building our friendship back to where it was. I mean, it almost feels like we're in a different chapter of our friendship, where in the past, there was some old stuff, and I think just some baggage. But I just now feel like we have a totally new chapter together.”

Radke, who previously described the split as “unbelievably emotionally hard,” says he’s feeling “good” about the future.

“I feel like I've got a lot of exciting things, career-wise,” he says. “I'm just really focusing on taking care of myself, working on Loverboy. It's not lost on me, there was a lot going on, but the way I get through a lot of difficult things in my past has been to focus on my career, focus on my friendships and my family.”

Related: Summer House Stars Carl Radke and Lindsay Hubbard’s Friends and Family Vacation in Mexico the Week of Their Canceled Wedding

Cooke says Radke has “really turned a corner” in the past four months.

“You can just see in his face,” he says. “I mean, obviously, it was super traumatic, super unfortunate for both of them, September, October. But you could just see the life coming back into his face, his emotion. He's got a little more pep in this step. So I'm happy to see Carl back to a great place.

Summer House will be back for an eighth season in 2024, and Cooke says, “Aside from the crazy ending, it was an amazing summer.”

“It kind of got back to our roots,” he says. ”I think season seven was a weird departure. I mean, you had a lot of the OGs kind of at odds with one another. That brought down the mood. I mean, we've always kind of pointed out when one another is basically kind of affecting the vibe of the house, and I think a lot of us, a lot of the OGs were affecting the vibe in season seven.”

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“If you want pure drama, where people are flipping tables and throwing wine glasses, there's a lot of shows that you can turn to,” he adds. “I think that a lot of people do look to Summer House as a more light-hearted escape, dare I say, ‘Oh my God, I wish I was at that party, or I wish I was at that house,’ or, ‘I wish it was in the Hamptons.’ I think we're going to bring that back.”

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