One Part of Being a Dad Made Ryan Serhant Say, "I Just Always Thought It Was Bulls--t"

When Ryan Serhant and Emilia Bechrakis welcomed daughter Zena earlier this year, it was a big surprise because they didn't announce publicly that Emilia was pregnant. But Zena is now here, and the couple is happier than ever. In fact, once Zena arrived, the Million Dollar Listing New York power agent found that an old saying finally made sense.

"It sounds so cliche, but I didn’t know that — everyone says this — but I didn’t know it was possible to love someone so much," he admitted to Entertainment Tonight. "I just always thought it was bulls--t. 'I’m sure your kid is cute, yeah, I love my parents,' you know? But then you have your own baby, and she's screaming, screaming, screaming when she came out of the womb, doctors all over her, they put her in my hands and told me to talk to her. They said, 'She’s going to recognize your voice from the womb,' and, in my head, I said, 'Yeah, OK, I guess…' I start talking, and she immediately looks at me and stops crying, and I was like, 'OK, my life just changed.' It was crazy. Such a crazy, crazy moment, and it gets better every day.”

Ryan said his wife was the one who decided they should keep their news a secret.

"She’s Greek Orthodox by birth, and I’m Greek Orthodox by choice, because I converted for her, [and] it’s superstition," he explained. "It was so hard for us to get pregnant [that] by the time we got pregnant, you know, I believe in bad juju and energy and positive thinking. I thought, let’s just keep it quiet, I don’t want anyone wishing bad harm on her."

In what may turn out to be a trend among high-power agents, Ryan's fellow MDLNY agent Steve Gold also had a baby with his girlfriend, Luiza Gawlowska, without telling the world first.

"We didn’t even know!" Ryan revealed. "We went to a housewarming party, and we walk in with our baby and we knew Fredrik [Eklund] was bringing his kids, and next thing you know, Steve introduces us to his girlfriend, who no one has even met before and, honestly, we thought he was kidding. He’s like, 'Oh, yeah, we’re pregnant and we’re having this baby, like, tomorrow.'"

Fatherhood has given these sometime-competitors a new subject to bond over, and it seems to be going well. 

"You go into, like, a duel of who can pull out their cell phone faster to show a picture of their kid!" Ryan said of when he sees Steve or Fredrik. "And then, we talk about real estate. I think it’s calmed all of us down. We’re all a little more, I don’t know, probably just a little calmer."