March 5, 2025 • 52 mins
“Golden Bachelorette” Joan Vassos explains to Thelma & Louise why long-distance marriage can work when it’s your “I Do, Part 2”.
Despite her closeness with her children, she did not get their permission for this…
And the man from her show she calls a “playboy” and why she won’t set him up.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
It's I Do Part two and we're Thelma and Louise,
your favorite bestie's back at it to have a great
conversation today about love and loss and chapter two. Our
guest today is someone we all fell in love with
when she opened herself up to love again on The
Golden Bachelor and then when she starred in the Golden Bachelorette.
(00:36):
We can't wait to talk with her today. Please welcome
Joan Vassos to the podcast. Welcome, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Hi Joan, Hi, how are you guys? Thank you for
wanting for me to be on your podcast. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
We're so excited.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
And I have to ask you a question that's totally
unrelated to anything that we're talking about today, but it's
always intrigued me.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
The clothes.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
I mean, how did you figure out your wardrobe for
the Bachelor and Bachelorette because I feel like you're in
evening gowns practically every night. I mean, did you have
to hire a stylist? Do you just have a naturally
good sense of style? How did you approach that? And
then I'll get into the meat of it, but I
had to ask.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
You, well, then we need to ask her about her arms,
because let's be real, her body is ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Oh god, no it's not. But thank you for saying that.
Good lightning, I think. So for the Golden Bachelor, I
had to do all my own clothes, and that you
could see that they weren't anywhere near as Golden Bachelerette
as good as Golden Bachelorette. So, Golden Bacher, you do
all your own clothes. You have to bring all your
own evening gowns and everything you wear every day is yours.
And then if you get to be the lead in
(01:41):
the show. So when I was the Golden Bachelorette, you
have a stylist's name is Carrie Fatman. He's a genius.
Do you go like three or four days before you
start filming, or maybe even a week before you start filming,
and you'd go and he has thirty racks of clothes,
at least thirty RECs. He has hundreds of dresses and
hundreds of outfits and they're all gorgeous, and you have
(02:02):
conversations with them before you arrive, so you know is
what your style is, like, your colors are and all that,
and then you just spend three full days like eight
to ten hour days trying on clothing, and then you
kind of narrow it down, like you know, he'll say,
you're going to need ten evening gowns, and so you
try on all the evening gowns and you narrow it
down to the ten and then he alters them so
they are like made for your body. So it is
(02:25):
like such a treat to have a stylist. Now I
have to go back and be my own boring, you know,
dressed like as you can see.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
You get to keep any of the clothes, any of
your kind of greatest hits.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
So I've heard through the Great Fige that you get
to pick some of the outfits that you want to keep.
But so far I don't have any of the clothes,
and I'd really like to have some of them. Yeah,
I'm hoping. I'm keeping my fingers press, but maybe I
get something an outfit or too. I know that a
lot of the evening gowns came from Randy Rahm, the
designer in New York I was talking about, and so
(02:55):
I think they go back to her. So they are
kind of like borrowed. They're not they don't belong to
the show. They're really expensive. She does like really big
like she does Beyonce and you know, really big stars.
You wore them, well, I got to wear them.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
You made her look good.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
I think everybody wears it as well. Thank you for
indulging me. It sounds like a total Cinderella moment.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Oh my god. So it was my favorite part of
the show other than finding sorry talk.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Okay, well, so now moving on, Joan, we loved watching
you in The Golden Bachelor and the Golden Bachelorette. But
for those listeners who may not be familiar with your story,
tell us a little bit about your chapter one.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Okay, chapter one. So when I was married to John.
So I met John when I was in college. We
dated on and off kind of throughout like a three
year period, and then when we both graduated from college,
we were kind of like in the good place, you know,
ready be ready to date more seriously, and we did
and we got engaged. We got married. We did all
the normal things that you know, married couples do. We
(03:55):
had jobs, and we built a house and we you know,
kind of started life together. We had four kidskids with
four kids in six years, so we you know, we
were you know, intimately involved in raising our kids and
doing sports and the community.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, and which is when I kind of loved, like
I really missed those years still, you know again, because
I loved kind of raising my kids. John and I
raising our kids with a bunch of other parents that
were raising their kids, and it was like a big
community effort and everybody says, Oh, we're going to have
pizza tonight, or we're going to go to the baseball game.
You know, our kids are playing and we're going to
sit on the sidelines. And they were just such great
(04:31):
bonding moments of raising our kids together. And I missed
that like community that we had. So then, you know,
my kids kind of grow up. They all went off
to college, and then now I've all kind of started
their own lives. When my youngest child was in college,
he was a junior in college, John was diagnosed with
pancreatic cancer. And it was kind of right as we
were thinking about like our second chapter of our lives,
(04:54):
like traveling and you know, maybe buying a second home someplace,
and you know, you kind of finally get to the
age where you have the time and you have you know,
kind of maybe a little more extra money and you
can do fun, you know, more fun things or different things.
And right when we were getting to that point in
our lives is when John got really, really sick. So
he survived the cancer for about two years, but it
(05:16):
was while he was in treatment. The whole time we
were traveling back and forth to Empty Anderson trying to
get him to be part of a trial. None of
we never found a trial that he was eligible for.
We never The chemo really didn't work all that well,
and then he did radiation, and eventually, after almost two years,
he passed away a pancreatic cancer.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
So sorry, that's so hard. That's that's that's awful, and.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
It's a terrible cancer. So those two years that he
was alive, most of those years weren't really weren't very good.
He was in a lot of pain. So it's it
was a horrible way to die. And and he left,
you know, kind of right at the part of our
life where we were going to start really having fun
and go back to being a couple, not just parents
that you know, to our four kids. So I felt
like my life had kind of ended, like my whole
(06:06):
future that I was planning with John was all of
a sudden like this black hole. There was no future.
I didn't have a person to spend it with. I
didn't really want to, you know, I just was kind
of in the mode of just staying alive and trying
to be strong for my kids, to try to like
support them as well as I could. And you know,
I would see them and I was the happy person,
and you know, we got we're getting through this and
we're a great family. And then I would go up
(06:27):
to my bedroom and I would cry. And that took
me about two years to get through kind of that
phase of life to then look and say, Okay, well
maybe I can't have a future. I didn't feel like
I could in the beginning, But then I thought, you know,
why am I at the age of fifty nine saying
that I can't have a second chance at love? Because
(06:47):
you know, I was married to John for thirty two years.
What tells me that I can't have somebody else for
thirty two years at that age? I possibly could. And
so I decided that I needed to take action, and
I did some dating apps, like everybody does, you know,
that's like the widest net.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
I am so scared of those dating apps and were
there friends that were pushing you to do it or
was it something your kids were involved with, saying Mom,
it's time to do that. Or did you and John
have those conversations that he wanted you to have another
kind of chapter two.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Yeah, kind of all of the book actually.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
So right before he passed away, about three days before
he passed away, I remember him calling me over to
this sop and he's like, come sit next to me,
comes in next to me. He was kind of in
and out of sleep. He was really sleeping. He was
pretty well drugged. And he said, we have a great
life together, and I want you to be happy again.
And he said I want you to find somebody else.
And I was in total denial. If it like, it's
(07:44):
hard to believe, I was, because he went from one
hundred and twenty one hundre two hundred and twenty pounds
to like one hundred and ten pounds and I still
looked at him and thought he was going to live.
And I said no, I said, I am not having
this conversation with you. I said, you are not leaving me,
and he's like, all right, oh, Joe. It was the
best gift he could have given me, because I would
have had a really really hard time doing this. If
(08:05):
I didn't have his blessing, In fact, I probably wouldn't
be here today because but he did this. You know,
he gave this to me and I didn't know it
at the time, and I didn't really even think about
it for a lot of months, probably well into the
second year after he had passed away, and it gave
me this freedom.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
It was almost like permission was a little bit of
permission almost right.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Absolutely wise, yeah, absolutely, And like I said, I wouldn't
have done this if I hadn't gotten that. He was
also a person that lived really big. He lived life
to the fullest. Like everything he did was epic. You
never went on like a normal vacation. You went to
the best hotel, and you rented like every boat and
every you know, like water toy you could rent, and
like everything was big and everything was huge. We go
(08:47):
to a restaurant, just a normal restaurant, and he orders
every dessert on the menu just because we wanted to
try it all.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
What a data VI, what a life spirit. But that's
so such a fun life, so brave of you. And
he's probably looking from above and he's happy and all that.
But it's so brave and it's I'm so happy for
you that you're you're getting this again. Are your kids
are they? How were they supportive of you? Do they
(09:13):
want to see you have another life? I mean, you
have four kids. I'm sure there was conflicting feelings for
all of them.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Kind of so they wanted me happy, absolutely, But I
think the whole process of like them knowing I was
dating wasn't really particularly comfortable. But you know, at this
but they're all adults, so it's not like I have
kids at home that are worried, you know, that I'm
going to bring a man home, you know, enter their
home or something like that. That wasn't a worry and
(09:39):
they wanted me to be happy. I just don't think
they really wanted the details of it. They didn't really
want to know a lot about relationships and stuff like that.
So when I was doing online dating, that was easy.
You know, I'd be like I'm going on days night,
or maybe I wouldn't even tell them whatever, And I
didn't talk about the men, you know, really very often.
When I told them that I had filled out the
application to go on build a.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Bag, Sorry, was that your idea to go on the
show or was that a friend so tell us about that.
That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
So I was out to dinner with a friend. We
were sitting at the bar, and it was right at
about the two year marks. So John had been gone
for about two years. The first year, you know, people say, oh,
after the first year, you start feeling better. Not true.
I felt like crap. In fact, I felt worse the
second year. It kind of all hit me like this
is my life, this like what the you know, like
what the heck happened? And so that second year was
(10:27):
really hard. And I was getting to the end of
that second year and I was starting to feel lonely.
Before I was just kind of numb, and then I
started feeling lonely and feeling like I wasn't part of
a couple, which is really hard in the world of couples.
And I had gone from being you know this, you know,
John and I had gone from being a couple that
we did. We had a lot of couple of friends
with I had a lot of couple of friends. We
(10:48):
did a lot with our couple of friends to me
being a single and then all of a sudden that
was excluded from all kinds of social things because I
was a single so I was starting to feel all
we're familiar with that, you get it right, and it's
so weird hard, Yeah, it really is. And I was
like like alone on singles Island and I hated it
and I wanted I was starting to feel like I
(11:09):
wanted to be a couple again, mainly because of the
like I missed doing the things with other couples.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Question. You mentioned that you met your husband You met
John in college, So you really I mean you never
really experienced dating. You fell in love young and kind
of it sounds like I grew up with John, so
first time in thirty years. That not only had you
been through really a tragedy, but you also had to
figure out like what what that looked to date?
Speaker 2 (11:46):
And so I mean, what were you feeling at.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
The time, and how did you approach that or did
you have help?
Speaker 2 (11:53):
You know? Yeah, so weird, right. I mean I had
this idea that I would rather meet somebody like or
so I had this new thing that I would do.
I meet friends out for dinner, and I have tons
of friends, so I would be out a lot and
you know, they kind of like a lot of them
kind of made me go out in the beginning, and
they're like, you can't sit at home. You need to
get out, You need to get out. And that kind
(12:14):
of became like my life, me going out with my friends,
you know, most evenings every week. So and I would
always go. We used to go sit at a table,
and I would say, let's sit at the bar now
because I thought it opened me up to us.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
So we do. We did it yesterday. It's so fun,
just the two of us though.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
It just and it's fun going out with a girlfriend
because a lot of times people will engage you with
talking and sometimes it's just another couple, a guy, a
man and a woman, like a husband and wife. But
you know, you never know, like when you're out if
that husband and wife have a friend or like the
more that you're out there and the more accessible you are,
So you need to not go sit at a table
where no one's going to come up to you. You need
to sit at the bar.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Or it doesn't just drop out of the sky, right
like you have to put it out there.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Absolutely totally agree with you on that one. So we
were out. We were sitting at a local restaurant, a bar,
like actually right across the street from a house where
I go off, and like, I know the bartender, I
know other people there, so it's like a really comfortable
place to meet for me. And I said to my friend,
you know, I really feel like I'm ready to maybe
start dating, and kind of in my I thought it
in my head. My heart didn't really feel that way yet,
(13:15):
but my head definitely knew that I wasn't getting any younger,
I wasn't getting prettier, I wasn't getting any more fun,
and that they were there could be guys out there
that are feeling the same way, maybe close to my
age or whatever, and I thought I felt like I
needed to get out there. So like I was saying
that into my head, but I said to her, I go, like,
look around this restaurant. I go, everybody here is a couple,
and she's like, yeah, they are. I go, how am
(13:37):
I ever going to meet somebody? I really want to
meet somebody organically. I don't want to do dating apps.
I want to like be at a wedding or be
at a bar like this, or at a restaurant, or
meet somebody at the grocery store. You both reach for
the tomato or you know some romantic story like that.
But I was like, it hasn't happened yet, and I
don't feel like it's going to happen. She's like, you're
going to have to do dating apps and I.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Was like, ugh, do you live in a small Do
you live in a small community where most people are married?
Were people thinking to set you up?
Speaker 2 (14:04):
So I kind of put it out there that I
was ready to be set up, and people were like, Oh,
you're not gonna like any of the guys I know
that are single, or look, I don't know anybody single.
So like people weren't particularly wanting to set me up.
They didn't think that I would be interested in the
people that we knew that were single. So, but I
don't live in a small community. I live right outside
(14:24):
of Washington, DC. I live actually right in the suburbs
of a big city. So it's not like there shouldn't
have been a lot of people out there. But I
guess my friends just said no once again, couples hang
out with couples.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
You also probably just wanted the exercise of dating, right,
I mean, it's not like you were like I need
to find my mister perfect. It's like, yeah, you probably
just didn't even know what it was like to date,
so it was more about like exercising the muscle, right.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
But she's also good at it. She's also great at
a relationship obviously. So I'm sure that that felt something
that would be another destination that you would want in
your life. Potentially.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Absolutely, Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love, like I said, being
part of a and I loved the give and take
and I love the I love going out with somebody.
I still love sitting at home and watching a Netflix
like I like having my person. It's just like I
had it for so many years of my life. I
didn't really know how to do it without having somebody,
Like like you said, I was. You know, we married
(15:17):
kind of young. You know, we started dating when we
were in college. I dated while I was in college,
but like it's college dating, that's not like serious dating.
I started dating seriously right out of college was John.
So I never really had a long term relationship with
anybody other than John. So I did need the practice
a lot. And so I came home from that restaurant
that night thinking I got to go on a dating
(15:38):
app and this, and I turned my TV on and
I'm a bachelor watcher and it was a Bachelor night,
and I turned my TV on to watch the Bachelor,
and the first commercial that came up said, we are
taking casting calls for a new series called the Golden Bachelor.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Oh my god, that's a message from the universe.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Directly, that's exactly what I saimilarly, like a speaking to me.
And so I filled that application out and I did
a really lousy job because I was on my phone
and I had had two glasses of wine and I
can't see or type. When after I got any wine.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
And there was no chat GPT, then yeah, well there
was and.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
I needed it. No, no, no, So I filled out
like I don't know. It was a long application, like
ninety questions. It was really really really long. I filled
out about half of it. I did the part where
you need to send you know, like your Instagram and
your social media stuff, which I don't think I had
any followers on Instagram. I'm going to be positive I
had it, but I set whatever I had.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
So you were the first star really of Golden Bachelette.
Did you honestly think that there was a reality or
potential that you could find a forever love on the show,
Like if so, and at what moment did you think yourself,
Oh my god, this this could really work for.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Me, This could happen. So it kind of became a
little bit of a reality when I was on Golden Boucher,
or not necessarily because of Gary. I mean, he was fine,
but I didn't think he was a match for me.
But when I went on my one in one date
with him, I felt like I could picture it finally,
like picture actually being with another person. And I hadn't
(17:08):
up until that point. I was even on the show
filming and still was thinking, you know, I don't picture
myself with anybody other than John. And after I went
on my date with Gary, even though I knew he
wasn't for me, and I left the next day, So
that was the day I left to go home to
my daughter, I all of a sudden, like a switch flipped,
and I felt like I could picture a life with
(17:28):
somebody else. And I think part of it was not
just being with Gary, but being with the other twenty
one other women and hearing them their stories and seeing
how much fun they're having dating and you know, their
stories about finding love again. It made me want it
more and think it was possible more because I'm like
these smart women that I really really respect and you know,
(17:48):
you know, kind of grew to love there. A lot
of them are my really really good friends. Now we're
doing it, and it gave me faith that if they
were doing it, why did I think that it wasn't
going to work for me. So it kind of like
the switch kind of clips. So when I went on
Golden but when I became the Golden Bacherette and I
started that filming, I actually was feeling pretty positive about it,
but I was worried because I hadn't met the men yet,
(18:08):
and I was like, I don't know what they're casting
for me, even though I know the producers pretty well
because I've done Golden Bachelor and over like that time
of them, you know, interviewing me and kind of selecting
me and going through that whole process to become the
Golden Bacherette. I really spoke to them a lot, and
they I felt like they knew me pretty well. But
I had no idea who was going to apply for this,
because I didn't know if there were going to be
(18:31):
a bunch of really outgoing men that you know, wanted
to be out there and wanted to date on National TV, Like,
I don't know if there's a big group of those people,
because most men I know would be like, yeah, no thanks,
I'm not going to do that on National TV. That's
like not very dignified. I just felt like they wouldn't
be open to being open and being vulnerable and talking
about their feelings, and that certainly is required in this process.
(18:53):
So I thought, maybe they're not going to have a
lot of men. So I was really worth the night
of the limousines entering. I was like, Okay, this is it.
I got to see if, like there's anybody good here,
and I felt pretty soon after the first couple limousines
came that this could be, this could work out. And
(19:14):
how did you.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Obviously you knew you were going on the Golden Bachelorette
and you'd already done the Golden Bachelor.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
But back to your kids.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
I think I read an article recently that talked about
how you had four kids and two of them kind
of have they had different opinions on you dating and
especially doing it in the limelight in front of the
you know, national television. So how much did you seek
input permission from them and really involve them in this process?
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Probably input, not permission, because I'm not sure if they
would ever not give me permission, because they would never
be like that selfish, and they knew, you know, I
really wanted to do it, they would want that for me.
But I did really want their input because I wanted
respect their privacy, because like, it was me going on
this journey, not them, And so I wanted to make
(20:05):
sure I didn't embarrass them. I didn't you know, reveal
anything about them that they didn't want revealed, because this
was my journey, not theirs. So I had conversations. I
had a lot of conversations with my kids, and I
had too that thought it was really kind of cool
and fun, and you know, my thought was and I
actually had this conversation with a friend of mine. I said, God,
(20:26):
I don't know if I'm gonna I want to do this.
I'm afraid that like, in some way, it's not respecting
John's memory, it's not honoring John by going out and
doing something this kind of mist salacious, you know, it's
a little you know, a little sortied maybe or something.
You know. I didn't feel that way, but I was
afraid that other people did. And and I kind of
knew how I was going to do this process and
(20:46):
that I was going to be dignified. I was going
to be embarrassing, but I just didn't want, like to
embarrass my kids.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
One of the things that Thelma and I really took
away was the way you handled those overnight dates that
you didn't I mean, it was so elegant and so
classy and respect I mean it was it was literally
Probably my biggest takeaway was how you handle that. It
(21:12):
was amazing.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Thank you. I put a lot of thought in that
because I didn't think it was going to be really
popular with the producers. I mean that's part of the show,
and or the guys or the guys or the guys
there's that too, But I felt like I had to
do what was right for me. And there's no in
no universe can I ever imagine sleeping with three guys
in the.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Same week, so with your kids and your friends and
your community watching the show.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Well, I agree with that, and I think and by
the way, I would have handled it the same way.
And as as you know, Louise indicated, I thought you
were a stellar and you were. You handled it head on,
you were direct, you were vulnerable and you were amazing.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
And so transparent.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
Question for you, was there any concern because obviously you
had I mean being with the person for thirty one years,
right and being I mean there's a level of comfort there.
Were you at all concerned that this was your opportunity
to you know, be with these men and were you
concerned at all about intimacy? I don't, you know, was
(22:27):
that a priority? Obviously not to that level.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
But you know what I'm saying, I absolutely so, Like
you said, you know, it was going to be very
weird and you know, kind of out of my comfort
zone again, like dating was out of my comfort zone.
I you know, kind of did that. But getting to
that end, you think, Okay, there's obviously a physical component.
I mean, and it's certainly a message that I wanted
out there. Honestly, I didn't want like this was a
(22:51):
show about people dating in their you know, second half
of their life, and so like, I think addressing an
intimacy part of it is important because I don't want
people to think that that's not an important part of
my relationship or a relationship at this age, we know
it is, right, I Mean, it's certainly like it's certainly
something that I wanted, but I didn't want to do
it on national TV. And I think there's things that
(23:13):
you can tell about your attraction to a person that
doesn't have to take it all the way to the end.
So I mean kissing is you know, really important, and
you know, I feel like there's more, there's intimate moments
that don't require you like having sex with somebody. And
so I mean, like I knew that I was only
going to have, you know, a physical relationship with one
(23:36):
person if I ended up with somebody, and you know,
I didn't, So I know I was going to end
up with somebody, but I knew that wasn't going to
be on the table for until the end, until I
was either engaged or the show was over, and I
had just one person left, whether engaged or not. And like,
I was not going to do it before that. It
just didn't feel right to me. It's just not my
it's just not the way ever operated.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
It's interesting because it's it's you get off the show
and all of a sudden you're engaged. And so in
addition to the you know, kind of physical step, there's
so much to learn about somebody and you guys have
you know, fifty years of life experiences completely separate that
(24:15):
you really need to see if kind of your Obviously
you've learned that your core values are aligned, but there
is such a learning curve to like really to see
and to almost undo other like kind of behaviors and
different things that you navigated for so long. With John,
it's been a big it's a big thing. So it
(24:37):
was kind of like getting off the show and then
I would assume you're looking at each other and you're like,
where do we start?
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Exactly what happened? It's hilarious. So you do you take
like this leap of faith? You really do? You say? Okay,
you know, like there's so many really good things. And
like I said from the very beginning, I don't need
to be engaged at the end of this process. I
want to leave this show with a signal I can't
one person that I wanted to explore how you know,
our lives would work together, that we would work together.
(25:06):
But I did feel pretty strongly about Chocolate. I did
feel like I was in love with him, and you know,
I thought he might actually propose to me, and he did,
and I had in my mind that I would say yes.
That I was going to take this leap of faith.
I don't have to I don't have to marry him,
but it would be nice to leave this process with
the real commitment. And so I said yes, obviously when
(25:27):
he asked me to marry him. And then we went back.
We were staying on a ship, and we went back
to the ship and we went into he was in
a suite. We were with in sweets. So I went,
I went down to his suite. I changed my clothes.
But on the evening, gown went down to his suite
and had a bottle of wine there and two glasses,
and he pored him and he goes, so, tell me
about yourself. Are you nervous?
Speaker 1 (25:47):
I would have been nervous.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
I was. I'm engaged in this person. I tell liquid courage.
I did I need liquids, curds. It was like one
o'clock in the afternoon and I'm we dranking two hobitles
of wine, I think. And we really just sat there
and got to know each other. Which you talked about kids,
We talked about marriages, we talked about things that we
talked about a little bit on the show. But once again,
I didn't want to read the deal, things about my
(26:09):
kids or you know, parts of my life that would
embarrass my kids or not. You know, I wouldn't went
on TV. And he was the same way. So it
was finally our chance to just be free and open
and talk about whatever we wanted. But we were really
lucky because Batcher does a really good job of fostering
your relationship during those months where you're not public yet.
So you you know, you finish filming and you have
(26:30):
like three months before the finale and they, you know,
they get that you need to like you know, date
kind of you need to be with each other and
figure out. So we had these they're called happy couple visits,
and we had five of them, which is more than
anybody has ever had it.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Psychondrigal visits in jail.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
It's like go to jail and like, you know, having
the room, but instead it's in a beautiful home to
these beautiful airbnbs in la and you have a pool
and a tennis court and some of them. So it's
lovely and they give you food you say, we're going
to cook, and they'll get to do your grocery shopping
for you, and they just give you time to be
together and actually and that first meeting was weird also
(27:08):
because we hadn't been together in like three weeks because
we'd stop filming. But we you know, there was time.
There was a chunk of time where we couldn't see
each other for like three weeks, and then we finally
went on our first a happy couple you know weekend,
which is like a four day weekend. And I remember
I got to the house before talk and I was like,
this is so awkward, Like he's just going to come
(27:29):
even seeing him a hurdly little the.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Guy, Well, you do look good on face time, so
hopefully you guys FaceTime regularly.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
We did a little bit. We talked a lot. We
didn't FaceTime quite as much because he would be working,
I'd be in like in my car or whatever. For
some reason, we didn't FaceTime all that much. But we
talked like five times a day. So we certainly were
getting to know each other really well. But we were
both super nervous coming into that house. And hey, I
got there first. He got there about an hour later,
and he walked in with the suitcase and he comes
(27:56):
in and he gives me a kiss, and we were
right back where we were before. So like it was
just like we didn't skip a beat. We were right
back kind of to where we were when we left,
when we were in love and we you know, we're
you know, figuring each other out. We got to that point.
So and then every visit after that and I said
we had five every time it was better and better
(28:17):
and better. We became more solid. We knew each other better,
but we still hadn't dated out like in the real world.
So we we you know, we dated in like a bubble.
So we finally, you know, after the finale started to
go you know, got to go out. We went to
New York City right at the finale and spent a
week there, and then he came to my home and
we spent time here, met some of my friends, and
(28:38):
you know, spent time with my family, and you know,
now we just kind of we kind of moved back.
We worked backwards. We got engaged.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
You guys have a rhythm, And do you feel that
when you have introduced him to your couple's friends or
the kids, Like are they open and warm? Are they judgmental?
Do you feel nervous? Do you feel uncomfort Like? How
does that play out when you bringing him into your world,
which was obviously a world with John for so long.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Yeah, it was a little in nerve wracking, and you know,
we happened our finale happened to have happened to occur
right before Thanksgiving, so it was like the second week
in November was willing they have had the finale, and
we made plans for our families to be together for Thanksgiving.
So that was really nice of him because he usually
does something else with his family for Thanksgiving. And his
(29:24):
kids said they would come, you know, to my house,
which was really nice. So both his kids came to
my house and they stayed here along with you know,
Chalk obviously was here, and we kind of merged the
families in a really kind of busy weekend where there's
a lot of other family involved, and it wasn't just
our two families. I have a big extended family, and
I wanted to respect that. You know. It was actually
(29:45):
most of the people that we get together with for
Thanksgiving is John's family, so I didn't want to change
that for my kids. Or I'm still very very very
close to my mother in law, my sister, and the
I mean they were part of my for like almost
you know, almost my whole life.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
She raised she raised you.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
You were kind of like she was. Yeah, I was
like twenty when we met.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
So how did that?
Speaker 2 (30:06):
How did that go? I mean, was it challenging?
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Was it?
Speaker 2 (30:10):
What did that look like? It was just chaotic? Honestly,
My daughter hosted it at her house and so we
all went there. So we had a couple of days
here and then Thanksgiving occurs and we all go over
to her house and there was like forty people and
it was chaotic and everybody wanted to meet Chalk and
his kids, and it was exhausting, to be totally honest,
it was a really really hard way to do it.
(30:32):
We did it all at once. It's done now now
everybody's met everybody. But it wasn't fun for me at all.
I was nervous.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
I would have been nervous on edge too the whole time.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Yeah, And we started at like three o'clock and by
eight o'clock I was freaking exhausted. I just I was like,
we got to go. And they felt the same way.
I think we were all in bed by nine o'clock
that night. We were just it was just a long,
hard day. It's an emotional day also, because everybody it's
like there's this big pink elephant in the like he's
not John yeah, and like we all see it, so
(31:03):
like he's now like stepping, you know, stepping into the
role of being my person. And it's hard for everybody
to accept that. It was hard for me to even
present it. So that was an uncomfortable day. Did you
debrief with your children? Did you debrief with your children afterwards?
I think we've kind of had that conversation about that
being you know, like a little bit of a rider day.
(31:25):
Our kids happened to get along really well together though,
so it's kind of fun. So the next day I
had made plans for us to go to a local brewery,
which is really fun, and they had these things they
have these yurts where you can rent so which oh
my god, they're so fun. And they had big, you know,
fire pits. And it was in a town that I
grew up in, so I know everybody there and we
(31:46):
went there and that day was fun. That day was
very social. The pressure was almost off.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
It was like beyond do you feel that the fact
that both you and Chalk have experienced grief and last
part that that gave you both a deeper understanding and
a comfort level which was created more of a connection.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Yeah. So I think that when you go through a
loss like that, that the little things become less important
and you realize that and maybe, you know, part of
that is probably maturity also that just naturally that would
have happened, but you look at like the small crap
and it just doesn't matter because because you realize how
(32:31):
how short life is, and you don't realize it until
you like come face to face with mortality, and that
doesn't happen until you know a loved one dies. If
you die or a loved one dies, that's you know,
that's the only time when you actually face it, like
with somebody like I fit, you know, I face mortality
with John and as he died, and Chalk did the
same thing with Kathy. So you have a different look
(32:55):
at life, to be honest, it's more fragile and more valuable.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
My best friend died of cancer over the pandemic, and
he has fallen in love with a widow who lost
her husband suddenly in an auto accident, and their relationship
is unbelievable to watch.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Yeah. Yeah, you value life and you value like your
moments so much more and easily so Joan, though.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
I mean, it's so fun to watch you and Chock
and you both have that sparkle in your eye and
it just seems.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Like you really really click.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
But now that you're you know, there's no more cameras
rolling all the rest and you're doing this long distance relationship, Like,
what are the challenges that come with that? And how
are you navigating kind of the distance and trying to
figure out do we move forward?
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Well, maybe she's moving to Kansas, are you?
Speaker 3 (34:01):
I thought we were meeting in New York in a
sexy pad and having fun there.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
That that is true. We are doing that. We're trying
to find a place, but it's really really hard to
find something, or to be honest, they just disappear, like
the minute they come in the market, they're gone. So
that's been a little bit of a challenge. We're still
working on that and it's still our plan. But we
also have the plan of kind of him spending time here,
me spending time in Kansas. He's been here more times
than I've been to Kansas, so I owe a Kansas trip,
(34:26):
which I'm actually making on Thursday, so I'm going there
again and then we're driving to Oklahoma to visit his father.
So I'm doing the whole mid Midwest tour next week
or this coming up week. I don't think that is
really a challenge, to be honest. Right now, we have
been fortunate, since you know we're pretty soon off the show,
(34:46):
you still have kind of opportunities. People still want to
see you around, and I'm sure all those will fade
very soon. But like iHeartRadio invited us to go to
the Jingle Ball, and you know, we've done a couple
other things. We've been invited by people to be on shows,
and like we were Drew very Moore at a couple
of weeks ago, so they invited to New York City
(35:07):
and we got to see each other there. So we
get invited to enough things right now that we organically
see each other once every couple weeks anyway, And then
we make an effort. Don't if we're not seeing each
other in every ten to fourteen days, we've planned something.
So the few times that we haven't had a reason
to meet, he's come here or we've been in New
York City, we've planned a trip. And then we just
(35:29):
got back from Cancun, so we went on a vacation together.
So we've done a good job of making sure that
we see each other. In fact, like I think we're
coming up on maybe the longest time that we haven't
seen each other, and it's feeling starting to feel kind
of crappy. But we're both really busy right now, and
like the absence makes the heart grow funder is kind
of a thing that I believe in. And when we
(35:51):
see each other, we're really happy to see each other,
like we are, We're like newlyweds, you know, We're like,
we need to be together at that point, and it
feels so good.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
No, that makes sense. Do you think that people that
are looking for their chapter two should be more open
to long distance dating? It opens up more options?
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Absolutely, and I wasn't. So I think I've learned a
lot from this experience. I have kind of a philosophy
and I talked about this. Actually before I went on
the show, CNN asked to interview me, and it was
right after Gary and Teresa had broken up. It was right,
it was fresh off the break up, and it was fresh.
It was actually they interviewed me like right the day
(36:30):
that I was announced that I was going to be
the Golden Bachelor of the day after. So it aired
the day after and they asked, I said, what are
you going to do? Like obviously this distance thing is
what caused that marriage to break up. You know, how
are you going to handle it? And I said, well,
I just want to put it out there right now
that I am not moving from Maryland. I have three
grandkids here, I have four kids that live there. I
am and I have a ninety two year old mother
(36:52):
and an eighty six year old mother in law that
I can't leave. So I am not leaving Maryland. So
if somebody thinks that they're coming on the show and
I am going to change that, that is not going
to happen. But I do realize that then that's a
whole different conversation. And it's going to take a lot
of effort to make this relationship work. And it's going
to be required that you know, you have to make
(37:12):
sure that your schedules are you know, you're going to
match your schedules. It's going to require travel, it's going
to require an effort to see each other, and I
am so willing to do that. I will bend over
backwards to make sure that that part we take care of.
So it's just a kind of a you know, you
have to look at it in a little bit of
different way. But I also in my mind thought, this
is like really a bad thing.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
You sound like Selma, Yeah, is that Yalma loves long distance.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
I love long distance, And I feel like having a
chapter one that was very traditional and it was wonderful,
but again, I think there's so many more variables in
chapter two, with families and kids and lives, lives and jobs,
and I was just going to say, I mean, are
you seeking a more non traditional relationship kind of? And
(38:00):
I don't mean there's not the connection in the bond
and all of that, but just the day to day
you know, it doesn't have to be under one roof,
like are you seeking something different this chapter? So I'm
not sure.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
If I'm seeking anything yet, but it's playing out in
the way I kind of expected to because I know
that Truck still has a business in Kansas, and I
still have grand kids, and I'm busy too. I feel
like we couldn't have the best of both the world.
So if I have something important going on here, he
has no problem playing here and doing what I need
(38:32):
to do. Or if I have something like I'm doing
this wine collaboration in California, so he and I are like,
we're meeting in California because it's kind of a fun
thing to do, kind of a.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
Sexy jet setting life.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
And people see this as a negative. I think it's
actually really fun. I think it's hugely a positive for us.
Right now we have all these really cool experiences together.
And maybe i'd see one day, you know, maybe next year,
maybe they reactor, maybe five years from now. Then I'm
going to go like, Okay, you know, it'd be nice
to have you around, like to cook dinner together and
to like start living a more normal life. But right now,
(39:05):
this is really fun and I am not looking to
change it, and.
Speaker 3 (39:08):
It's probably been I would think, is it been helpful
for your children, because I mean life has changed. You
obviously have a loved one now, but it's probably nice
that they still have you to themselves occasionally and you
know the routine of what was pre Chock.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Yeah, I think you're right, Like it hasn't been a
big up people to their lives. It hasn't changed all
that much. Like I'll go away for a week at
a time or ten days at a time and then
be home for a week or two weeks at a time,
and so it's a little different, but it's not a
lot different. But the difference is they really like it
when Chalk comes here because they really like him. He's
just a fun, easy person of the round. Yeah. So
(39:45):
he stays here and you know, we come down for
you know, like to have coffee in the morning, and
you know, one of my kids will be here, and
I feel like they like him maybe more than like me.
They really have fun.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
So he fits. He really he really fits, and.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
He has a great since humor, is fun to be around.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
He's also has a very calming what I mean. He
has such a calming energy about him. And when I
looked at the two of you when we were all
in Pebble Beach, I saw the excitement and the attraction,
but I saw peace, like a real kind of peaceful
connection with the two of you, where you guys just
felt safe with each other.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
That's like such a great way to put it, because
that was something that when John passed away, I felt
like floating, untethered, like I just was like it was
just me. Even though I have a great family and
I have so much love in my life. I felt
very alone and that it was like me against the world,
and he grounds me. I don't feel that way anymore.
(40:43):
I feel like I have my person and that he
makes me feel safe. I felt like he grounded me.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
We interviewed him at Pebble Beach and he was full
of sage advice and you can tell he's one of
those guys that it's not that he needs to be
the center of attention and speak all the time.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
He has a quiet confidence, but.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
When he does speak, it really resonates with you. And
if anyone hasn't watched that episode, I would encourage them
to do so because I think it was so interesting
to talk to all three of the bachelor's when we
git them and they're different takes on everything.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
It was. It was really it was.
Speaker 3 (41:19):
I think it was really helpful for us as when
there are different john we talk.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
A lot in our friends group about sharing or recycling men.
Were there any of the men that were in either
you know in your season that you would kind of
pivot to one of your friends or single friends.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Yeah, kind of. So there was a thought for me
that and not just I didn't just think about it
was like a subject, you know, conversation subject with the
Golden Bachelor women. So the women that came off of
Gary season, so there were twenty one of us, they
were all very interested in when I came home from
(42:03):
Golden Bachelorette, and I really couldn't talk about like who
had gone and who didn't until on the show you
could see that they had been eliminated, and then I
could kind of address relationships for each one of those
people as they got eliminated. You became a match maker,
and I became the matchmaker. I did, and I would
be getting messages the next day, like after the show aired,
So whoever got let go that night, people would be like,
(42:25):
what do you think? Do you think that he would
like me? Would would you think we're being a good match?
And I definitely had some matches and I actually worked
on several. Unfortunately none of them really worked out. The
guys on my season rescued a little younger than the
women on Gary season because I was younger. Gary was
seventy and I was sixty interesting and so yeah, so
(42:48):
the ages didn't match up. I had guys the age
from fifty seven and the oldest one on my season
was sixty nine and it was Pascal and he was
by far the oldest. I think the next one to
him was maybe closer to like sixty six of it,
and the most of my guys.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Are really good for his age though.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Yeah, yeah, he's very fit. He's a good looking guy.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
So it sounds like you dated a little bit before
obviously the Golden Bachelorette, and you dated several men on
the Golden Bachelorettes, so you definitely are are are a
force and have probably a lot of advice to give
what red like subtle red flags do you think that
people ignore when looking at chapter two?
Speaker 1 (43:26):
Dating?
Speaker 2 (43:26):
So, I think people have like a tendency to date
a certain type. So some people like the bad boys,
some people you know, you kind of are attracted to something,
and it's always pretty consistent, like who you're attracted to.
I think that the smartest thing to do when you're
dating is to try to get away from those because
if you've been dating for a long time and it
(43:48):
hasn't worked out, it's probably because you're not looking for
the right kind of person.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
You sound like the j Sheetty podcast that was on
today with Jillian Tareki, which was all about what you're
basically saying right now, which is date differently than what
you've done if it hasn't been working.
Speaker 2 (44:03):
I really strongly about that, because I too have a
tendency to date like a certain kind of guy. I've
been Actually, Chalk is very much like my late husband John.
So I actually I think I'm a good picker, but
I'm not sure. I've seen a lot of people who
aren't good pickers, who particularly the people that like the
bad boy and like I feel like, Okay, that's something
great to do when you're in high school in college,
(44:24):
but when you're looking for a relationship that's a bad guy,
that's not the person you want where they like a playboy.
So you know, past girl is a bit of a playboy.
You know, I wasn't going to pick him because I
knew that about him. He self eliminated. That was all good.
All of that worked out the way it was supposed to.
I feel like red flags are the way you're dating
not and the way you pick because you have a
(44:47):
tendency to pick the same kind of person I certainly do.
I that both of you do, and that you should
like widen your your net a little bit. You know,
I heard a podcast recently about fixing your profile on
a dating app and that you should widen the people
(45:08):
that you're accepting messages from, so like make it a
bigger age gap that that you say are okay, or
don't specify religion or don't specify a number of miles
that they need to be within, Like why did all
of those parameters? So you get introduced to more people
and you'll have a better likelihood of finding somebody better
(45:28):
or sending a better match for you.
Speaker 3 (45:30):
Yeah, that's insightful because I feel like when you think
of red flags, you're always thinking about looking at other
people and their red flags, right, But it's really what
you're saying is it might be within us.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
You need to listen to that podcast Filma. That's what
it was today. So, Joan, did you have speaking of
red flags and me and bad Boys, did you have
crazy wild butterflies the minute you met Schoks. I know
a lot of people say that butterflies can be almost
a warning signal, and I'm so I'm always trying to
(46:01):
sit with myself on a date and say, you know, butterflies,
no butterflies, good thing, bad saying what do you think?
Speaker 2 (46:08):
So I did have butterflies, which is really good. So
when he stepped down the limbo, I thought, Okay, now
that's a good looking guy. He's a great dresser. I
think he's a good dresser too. He's a good dresser.
He doesn't and he doesn't know. He thinks he's not
a good dresser, but he is very really good. You
have to look really good enclosed. He also looks good
out of close, but he and because he's tall and
he's pretty thin, so and he's in shape. He has
(46:30):
really wide shoulders, broad shoulders which just kind of just
make your body just look good anyway. So I close
hangs so well like that, yeah, hangs in like it
just like has a presence kind of about you. Like
it's like like there's a man, you know. So I
liked him when I go out of the limbo. When
I really really liked him is kind of when I
needed to feel a comfort and was at Disneyland, and
(46:53):
that was you know, that was a a kind of
a stressful as a first date. So I was stressed.
I was, I was, I was really nervous. And I
came in on this like little train thingy and they
dropped me off from the plane on the train platform
and he's standing there and I immediately felt again the
word safe with him, and I thought he was really sexy.
(47:14):
And he put his arm around me and he made
me feel comfortable and I had butterflies, and I was like,
this is really good. And that date was phenomenal. Probably
the best date I've ever went.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
On was that before he left? Was that before he
So were you sad when he left?
Speaker 2 (47:28):
Like?
Speaker 1 (47:28):
Did you think he was going to come back?
Speaker 2 (47:30):
I was devastated when he left, Okay, And.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
That's a sign too that you knew you liked him.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
That was the day I knew that he was the guy.
Speaker 3 (47:38):
Oh my, I was going to ask you that I
was going to ask you because I feel like it
was obvious. I mean it was written Oliver's face that
he was just enamored with you. And I also think
it was kind of ironic that the most pedestrian of dates,
no offense to the bachelor, you know what I mean,
that you had you had like that was the most
pedestrian of all the dates, and that was your guy,
you know, I mean, it wasn't like flying off in
(47:59):
the hell copter or doing anything super sex Well.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
Also Joan had left her show too. You just didn't
come back, and so that was the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
I when I came to the mansion that day was
literally you know, like you know, very soon after our date,
and he was standing waiting outside for me, and I
was like, that's exactly what they had me do when
I had to tell Gary I was leaving. It was exactly.
And there was that bench was sitting right there, which
was the exact same bench I sat on and had
to say goodbye to Gary. And I was like, oh,
(48:29):
something is going something is not good here, but this
is bizarre. I was going to the mansion to go
on a date with with Jordan. I had a date
that day. I was arriving at the at the mansion
to go on a date and there was standing talk
is standing there at the front door waiting for me,
and he said, Hey, can I talk to you for
a minute. I'm like, that's exactly what I said to Gary, Hey,
I need to talk to you for a minute. And
(48:49):
we sat down on the bench and he said, I
had a very importunate thing happened last night. I knew
his mom was really sick. So my mom passed and
you know, I need some help figuring out what I
should do. And I was like, you have to go there.
And so he had a stepfather elderly, and I said,
you need to go see your stepfather. And so he
decided he was going to do that, and that's absolutely
(49:09):
the right decision. But when he walked away, I remember
and he said, I will be back. I'm coming back,
and I thought, yeah, he thinks he's coming back. I
thought I was coming back, and I know.
Speaker 3 (49:18):
I mean, he couldn't get back there fast enough though.
I'm sure that he did tend to his family, but
I felt like he must have taken somebody the concourse
back like he. I felt like he was like he
was back, and I was like, he was not.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
Going to let this opportunity go. I thank god because
he left, and I, you know, I had to function
that day. I had to go on the date, and
you know, I didn't want to. I needed to be
true to that guy, to Jordan. You know, he was
excited he had a date, and I, you know, I
did the best I could to have a great time,
and I think we did a great your heart, but
I was worried the whole time that I that chalk
(49:50):
wasn't going to come back. And in my mind, when
I finally got to like be off a date and
like have some time to think, I my mind said,
he doesn't know if he can come back, And how
in the world I am I going to do this
whole journey because right now, like he was like number
one in my mind, I said, I will have this
unanswered question forever.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
Would have changed the course of the entire show?
Speaker 2 (50:13):
Who would have changed the course of the entire show?
And I am not positive I would have gotten to
an ending of picking somebody. I think I might have,
just he would be too big of a question market
I had. I don't think I could have gotten all
the way to the end and found somebody else. He
was pretty clearly the guy that I like had kind
of honed in on. But I was also really careful
as we were filming because I thought that really early on.
(50:36):
I thought that at the Disneyland date that this was
pretty a really good date and that he I felt
really good about him. But I know that people do
that a lot on Bauchler, and they kind of hone
in on a person and they get like four weeks
in and discover that that person is not the person
they thought that he was or she was, and that
then they have to pivot and they don't have very
much time then to establish another good relationship. So I
(50:59):
was really careful that every person I dated, every every
date or every interaction, I treated them like they were
the person. Like I was really you know, making sure
I got to do them really well and was giving them,
you know, I gave everybody like an equal chance, even
though in my mind I did feel like Chalk was
the person.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
That's really good advice for the for the future bachelor's
and bachelorettes to give everybody their day in.
Speaker 3 (51:24):
Court, and you did, and I felt like everybody felt
that and was they They constantly I think told you
how appreciative they were that they had your full attention.
Speaker 2 (51:32):
I feel like I really got to know some amazing men,
and like that's part of the journey also, is that
even though you don't pick everybody, at the end, you
end up with these really like unique friendships that you've
gone through this weird journey of dating, and like they
are your all your old boyfriends, which is just kind
of a funny thing to say, because we all don't
(51:53):
really feel that way. I mean, you know, it's a
it's a quick journey. It's only eight weeks. You never
get bad and beaded in somebody unless they're like the
person that you're picking. So everything is like you hold
back a little bit so you don't dive like totally
in and they hold back a little bit too.
Speaker 1 (52:10):
You have to.
Speaker 2 (52:10):
You have to protect your heart.
Speaker 3 (52:11):
It's like it was college again. It was like watching
college again.
Speaker 1 (52:14):
It was fun.
Speaker 3 (52:15):
But it's been so amazing to talk to you.
It's I Do Part two and we're Thelma and Louise,
your favorite bestie's back at it to have a great
conversation today about love and loss and chapter two. Our
guest today is someone we all fell in love with
when she opened herself up to love again on The
Golden Bachelor and then when she starred in the Golden Bachelorette.
(00:36):
We can't wait to talk with her today. Please welcome
Joan Vassos to the podcast. Welcome, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Hi Joan, Hi, how are you guys? Thank you for
wanting for me to be on your podcast. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
We're so excited.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
And I have to ask you a question that's totally
unrelated to anything that we're talking about today, but it's
always intrigued me.
Speaker 1 (00:58):
The clothes.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
I mean, how did you figure out your wardrobe for
the Bachelor and Bachelorette because I feel like you're in
evening gowns practically every night. I mean, did you have
to hire a stylist? Do you just have a naturally
good sense of style? How did you approach that? And
then I'll get into the meat of it, but I
had to ask.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
You, well, then we need to ask her about her arms,
because let's be real, her body is ridiculous.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
Oh god, no it's not. But thank you for saying that.
Good lightning, I think. So for the Golden Bachelor, I
had to do all my own clothes, and that you
could see that they weren't anywhere near as Golden Bachelerette
as good as Golden Bachelorette. So, Golden Bacher, you do
all your own clothes. You have to bring all your
own evening gowns and everything you wear every day is yours.
And then if you get to be the lead in
(01:41):
the show. So when I was the Golden Bachelorette, you
have a stylist's name is Carrie Fatman. He's a genius.
Do you go like three or four days before you
start filming, or maybe even a week before you start filming,
and you'd go and he has thirty racks of clothes,
at least thirty RECs. He has hundreds of dresses and
hundreds of outfits and they're all gorgeous, and you have
(02:02):
conversations with them before you arrive, so you know is
what your style is, like, your colors are and all that,
and then you just spend three full days like eight
to ten hour days trying on clothing, and then you
kind of narrow it down, like you know, he'll say,
you're going to need ten evening gowns, and so you
try on all the evening gowns and you narrow it
down to the ten and then he alters them so
they are like made for your body. So it is
(02:25):
like such a treat to have a stylist. Now I
have to go back and be my own boring, you know,
dressed like as you can see.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
You get to keep any of the clothes, any of
your kind of greatest hits.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
So I've heard through the Great Fige that you get
to pick some of the outfits that you want to keep.
But so far I don't have any of the clothes,
and I'd really like to have some of them. Yeah,
I'm hoping. I'm keeping my fingers press, but maybe I
get something an outfit or too. I know that a
lot of the evening gowns came from Randy Rahm, the
designer in New York I was talking about, and so
(02:55):
I think they go back to her. So they are
kind of like borrowed. They're not they don't belong to
the show. They're really expensive. She does like really big
like she does Beyonce and you know, really big stars.
You wore them, well, I got to wear them.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
You made her look good.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
I think everybody wears it as well. Thank you for
indulging me. It sounds like a total Cinderella moment.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Oh my god. So it was my favorite part of
the show other than finding sorry talk.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Okay, well, so now moving on, Joan, we loved watching
you in The Golden Bachelor and the Golden Bachelorette. But
for those listeners who may not be familiar with your story,
tell us a little bit about your chapter one.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Okay, chapter one. So when I was married to John.
So I met John when I was in college. We
dated on and off kind of throughout like a three
year period, and then when we both graduated from college,
we were kind of like in the good place, you know,
ready be ready to date more seriously, and we did
and we got engaged. We got married. We did all
the normal things that you know, married couples do. We
(03:55):
had jobs, and we built a house and we you know,
kind of started life together. We had four kidskids with
four kids in six years, so we you know, we
were you know, intimately involved in raising our kids and
doing sports and the community.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, and which is when I kind of loved, like
I really missed those years still, you know again, because
I loved kind of raising my kids. John and I
raising our kids with a bunch of other parents that
were raising their kids, and it was like a big
community effort and everybody says, Oh, we're going to have
pizza tonight, or we're going to go to the baseball game.
You know, our kids are playing and we're going to
sit on the sidelines. And they were just such great
(04:31):
bonding moments of raising our kids together. And I missed
that like community that we had. So then, you know,
my kids kind of grow up. They all went off
to college, and then now I've all kind of started
their own lives. When my youngest child was in college,
he was a junior in college, John was diagnosed with
pancreatic cancer. And it was kind of right as we
were thinking about like our second chapter of our lives,
(04:54):
like traveling and you know, maybe buying a second home someplace,
and you know, you kind of finally get to the
age where you have the time and you have you know,
kind of maybe a little more extra money and you
can do fun, you know, more fun things or different things.
And right when we were getting to that point in
our lives is when John got really, really sick. So
he survived the cancer for about two years, but it
(05:16):
was while he was in treatment. The whole time we
were traveling back and forth to Empty Anderson trying to
get him to be part of a trial. None of
we never found a trial that he was eligible for.
We never The chemo really didn't work all that well,
and then he did radiation, and eventually, after almost two years,
he passed away a pancreatic cancer.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
So sorry, that's so hard. That's that's that's awful, and.
Speaker 2 (05:42):
It's a terrible cancer. So those two years that he
was alive, most of those years weren't really weren't very good.
He was in a lot of pain. So it's it
was a horrible way to die. And and he left,
you know, kind of right at the part of our
life where we were going to start really having fun
and go back to being a couple, not just parents
that you know, to our four kids. So I felt
like my life had kind of ended, like my whole
(06:06):
future that I was planning with John was all of
a sudden like this black hole. There was no future.
I didn't have a person to spend it with. I
didn't really want to, you know, I just was kind
of in the mode of just staying alive and trying
to be strong for my kids, to try to like
support them as well as I could. And you know,
I would see them and I was the happy person,
and you know, we got we're getting through this and
we're a great family. And then I would go up
(06:27):
to my bedroom and I would cry. And that took
me about two years to get through kind of that
phase of life to then look and say, Okay, well
maybe I can't have a future. I didn't feel like
I could in the beginning, But then I thought, you know,
why am I at the age of fifty nine saying
that I can't have a second chance at love? Because
(06:47):
you know, I was married to John for thirty two years.
What tells me that I can't have somebody else for
thirty two years at that age? I possibly could. And
so I decided that I needed to take action, and
I did some dating apps, like everybody does, you know,
that's like the widest net.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
I am so scared of those dating apps and were
there friends that were pushing you to do it or
was it something your kids were involved with, saying Mom,
it's time to do that. Or did you and John
have those conversations that he wanted you to have another
kind of chapter two.
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Yeah, kind of all of the book actually.
Speaker 1 (07:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
So right before he passed away, about three days before
he passed away, I remember him calling me over to
this sop and he's like, come sit next to me,
comes in next to me. He was kind of in
and out of sleep. He was really sleeping. He was
pretty well drugged. And he said, we have a great
life together, and I want you to be happy again.
And he said I want you to find somebody else.
And I was in total denial. If it like, it's
(07:44):
hard to believe, I was, because he went from one
hundred and twenty one hundre two hundred and twenty pounds
to like one hundred and ten pounds and I still
looked at him and thought he was going to live.
And I said no, I said, I am not having
this conversation with you. I said, you are not leaving me,
and he's like, all right, oh, Joe. It was the
best gift he could have given me, because I would
have had a really really hard time doing this. If
(08:05):
I didn't have his blessing, In fact, I probably wouldn't
be here today because but he did this. You know,
he gave this to me and I didn't know it
at the time, and I didn't really even think about
it for a lot of months, probably well into the
second year after he had passed away, and it gave
me this freedom.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
It was almost like permission was a little bit of
permission almost right.
Speaker 2 (08:27):
Absolutely wise, yeah, absolutely, And like I said, I wouldn't
have done this if I hadn't gotten that. He was
also a person that lived really big. He lived life
to the fullest. Like everything he did was epic. You
never went on like a normal vacation. You went to
the best hotel, and you rented like every boat and
every you know, like water toy you could rent, and
like everything was big and everything was huge. We go
(08:47):
to a restaurant, just a normal restaurant, and he orders
every dessert on the menu just because we wanted to
try it all.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
What a data VI, what a life spirit. But that's
so such a fun life, so brave of you. And
he's probably looking from above and he's happy and all that.
But it's so brave and it's I'm so happy for
you that you're you're getting this again. Are your kids
are they? How were they supportive of you? Do they
(09:13):
want to see you have another life? I mean, you
have four kids. I'm sure there was conflicting feelings for
all of them.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
Kind of so they wanted me happy, absolutely, But I
think the whole process of like them knowing I was
dating wasn't really particularly comfortable. But you know, at this
but they're all adults, so it's not like I have
kids at home that are worried, you know, that I'm
going to bring a man home, you know, enter their
home or something like that. That wasn't a worry and
(09:39):
they wanted me to be happy. I just don't think
they really wanted the details of it. They didn't really
want to know a lot about relationships and stuff like that.
So when I was doing online dating, that was easy.
You know, I'd be like I'm going on days night,
or maybe I wouldn't even tell them whatever, And I
didn't talk about the men, you know, really very often.
When I told them that I had filled out the
application to go on build a.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Bag, Sorry, was that your idea to go on the
show or was that a friend so tell us about that.
That's amazing.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
So I was out to dinner with a friend. We
were sitting at the bar, and it was right at
about the two year marks. So John had been gone
for about two years. The first year, you know, people say, oh,
after the first year, you start feeling better. Not true.
I felt like crap. In fact, I felt worse the
second year. It kind of all hit me like this
is my life, this like what the you know, like
what the heck happened? And so that second year was
(10:27):
really hard. And I was getting to the end of
that second year and I was starting to feel lonely.
Before I was just kind of numb, and then I
started feeling lonely and feeling like I wasn't part of
a couple, which is really hard in the world of couples.
And I had gone from being you know this, you know,
John and I had gone from being a couple that
we did. We had a lot of couple of friends
with I had a lot of couple of friends. We
(10:48):
did a lot with our couple of friends to me
being a single and then all of a sudden that
was excluded from all kinds of social things because I
was a single so I was starting to feel all
we're familiar with that, you get it right, and it's
so weird hard, Yeah, it really is. And I was
like like alone on singles Island and I hated it
and I wanted I was starting to feel like I
(11:09):
wanted to be a couple again, mainly because of the
like I missed doing the things with other couples.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Question. You mentioned that you met your husband You met
John in college, So you really I mean you never
really experienced dating. You fell in love young and kind
of it sounds like I grew up with John, so
first time in thirty years. That not only had you
been through really a tragedy, but you also had to
figure out like what what that looked to date?
Speaker 2 (11:46):
And so I mean, what were you feeling at.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
The time, and how did you approach that or did
you have help?
Speaker 2 (11:53):
You know? Yeah, so weird, right. I mean I had
this idea that I would rather meet somebody like or
so I had this new thing that I would do.
I meet friends out for dinner, and I have tons
of friends, so I would be out a lot and
you know, they kind of like a lot of them
kind of made me go out in the beginning, and
they're like, you can't sit at home. You need to
get out, You need to get out. And that kind
(12:14):
of became like my life, me going out with my friends,
you know, most evenings every week. So and I would
always go. We used to go sit at a table,
and I would say, let's sit at the bar now
because I thought it opened me up to us.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
So we do. We did it yesterday. It's so fun,
just the two of us though.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
It just and it's fun going out with a girlfriend
because a lot of times people will engage you with
talking and sometimes it's just another couple, a guy, a
man and a woman, like a husband and wife. But
you know, you never know, like when you're out if
that husband and wife have a friend or like the
more that you're out there and the more accessible you are,
So you need to not go sit at a table
where no one's going to come up to you. You need
to sit at the bar.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Or it doesn't just drop out of the sky, right
like you have to put it out there.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Absolutely totally agree with you on that one. So we
were out. We were sitting at a local restaurant, a bar,
like actually right across the street from a house where
I go off, and like, I know the bartender, I
know other people there, so it's like a really comfortable
place to meet for me. And I said to my friend,
you know, I really feel like I'm ready to maybe
start dating, and kind of in my I thought it
in my head. My heart didn't really feel that way yet,
(13:15):
but my head definitely knew that I wasn't getting any younger,
I wasn't getting prettier, I wasn't getting any more fun,
and that they were there could be guys out there
that are feeling the same way, maybe close to my
age or whatever, and I thought I felt like I
needed to get out there. So like I was saying
that into my head, but I said to her, I go, like,
look around this restaurant. I go, everybody here is a couple,
and she's like, yeah, they are. I go, how am
(13:37):
I ever going to meet somebody? I really want to
meet somebody organically. I don't want to do dating apps.
I want to like be at a wedding or be
at a bar like this, or at a restaurant, or
meet somebody at the grocery store. You both reach for
the tomato or you know some romantic story like that.
But I was like, it hasn't happened yet, and I
don't feel like it's going to happen. She's like, you're
going to have to do dating apps and I.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
Was like, ugh, do you live in a small Do
you live in a small community where most people are married?
Were people thinking to set you up?
Speaker 2 (14:04):
So I kind of put it out there that I
was ready to be set up, and people were like, Oh,
you're not gonna like any of the guys I know
that are single, or look, I don't know anybody single.
So like people weren't particularly wanting to set me up.
They didn't think that I would be interested in the
people that we knew that were single. So, but I
don't live in a small community. I live right outside
(14:24):
of Washington, DC. I live actually right in the suburbs
of a big city. So it's not like there shouldn't
have been a lot of people out there. But I
guess my friends just said no once again, couples hang
out with couples.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
You also probably just wanted the exercise of dating, right,
I mean, it's not like you were like I need
to find my mister perfect. It's like, yeah, you probably
just didn't even know what it was like to date,
so it was more about like exercising the muscle, right.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
But she's also good at it. She's also great at
a relationship obviously. So I'm sure that that felt something
that would be another destination that you would want in
your life. Potentially.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Absolutely, Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love, like I said, being
part of a and I loved the give and take
and I love the I love going out with somebody.
I still love sitting at home and watching a Netflix
like I like having my person. It's just like I
had it for so many years of my life. I
didn't really know how to do it without having somebody,
Like like you said, I was. You know, we married
(15:17):
kind of young. You know, we started dating when we
were in college. I dated while I was in college,
but like it's college dating, that's not like serious dating.
I started dating seriously right out of college was John.
So I never really had a long term relationship with
anybody other than John. So I did need the practice
a lot. And so I came home from that restaurant
that night thinking I got to go on a dating
(15:38):
app and this, and I turned my TV on and
I'm a bachelor watcher and it was a Bachelor night,
and I turned my TV on to watch the Bachelor,
and the first commercial that came up said, we are
taking casting calls for a new series called the Golden Bachelor.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Oh my god, that's a message from the universe.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
Directly, that's exactly what I saimilarly, like a speaking to me.
And so I filled that application out and I did
a really lousy job because I was on my phone
and I had had two glasses of wine and I
can't see or type. When after I got any wine.
Speaker 1 (16:08):
And there was no chat GPT, then yeah, well there
was and.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
I needed it. No, no, no, So I filled out
like I don't know. It was a long application, like
ninety questions. It was really really really long. I filled
out about half of it. I did the part where
you need to send you know, like your Instagram and
your social media stuff, which I don't think I had
any followers on Instagram. I'm going to be positive I
had it, but I set whatever I had.
Speaker 1 (16:28):
So you were the first star really of Golden Bachelette.
Did you honestly think that there was a reality or
potential that you could find a forever love on the show,
Like if so, and at what moment did you think yourself,
Oh my god, this this could really work for.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Me, This could happen. So it kind of became a
little bit of a reality when I was on Golden Boucher,
or not necessarily because of Gary. I mean, he was fine,
but I didn't think he was a match for me.
But when I went on my one in one date
with him, I felt like I could picture it finally,
like picture actually being with another person. And I hadn't
(17:08):
up until that point. I was even on the show
filming and still was thinking, you know, I don't picture
myself with anybody other than John. And after I went
on my date with Gary, even though I knew he
wasn't for me, and I left the next day, So
that was the day I left to go home to
my daughter, I all of a sudden, like a switch flipped,
and I felt like I could picture a life with
(17:28):
somebody else. And I think part of it was not
just being with Gary, but being with the other twenty
one other women and hearing them their stories and seeing
how much fun they're having dating and you know, their
stories about finding love again. It made me want it
more and think it was possible more because I'm like
these smart women that I really really respect and you know,
(17:48):
you know, kind of grew to love there. A lot
of them are my really really good friends. Now we're
doing it, and it gave me faith that if they
were doing it, why did I think that it wasn't
going to work for me. So it kind of like
the switch kind of clips. So when I went on
Golden but when I became the Golden Bacherette and I
started that filming, I actually was feeling pretty positive about it,
but I was worried because I hadn't met the men yet,
(18:08):
and I was like, I don't know what they're casting
for me, even though I know the producers pretty well
because I've done Golden Bachelor and over like that time
of them, you know, interviewing me and kind of selecting
me and going through that whole process to become the
Golden Bacherette. I really spoke to them a lot, and
they I felt like they knew me pretty well. But
I had no idea who was going to apply for this,
because I didn't know if there were going to be
(18:31):
a bunch of really outgoing men that you know, wanted
to be out there and wanted to date on National TV, Like,
I don't know if there's a big group of those people,
because most men I know would be like, yeah, no thanks,
I'm not going to do that on National TV. That's
like not very dignified. I just felt like they wouldn't
be open to being open and being vulnerable and talking
about their feelings, and that certainly is required in this process.
(18:53):
So I thought, maybe they're not going to have a
lot of men. So I was really worth the night
of the limousines entering. I was like, Okay, this is it.
I got to see if, like there's anybody good here,
and I felt pretty soon after the first couple limousines
came that this could be, this could work out. And
(19:14):
how did you.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Obviously you knew you were going on the Golden Bachelorette
and you'd already done the Golden Bachelor.
Speaker 1 (19:20):
But back to your kids.
Speaker 3 (19:22):
I think I read an article recently that talked about
how you had four kids and two of them kind
of have they had different opinions on you dating and
especially doing it in the limelight in front of the
you know, national television. So how much did you seek
input permission from them and really involve them in this process?
Speaker 2 (19:43):
Probably input, not permission, because I'm not sure if they
would ever not give me permission, because they would never
be like that selfish, and they knew, you know, I
really wanted to do it, they would want that for me.
But I did really want their input because I wanted
respect their privacy, because like, it was me going on
this journey, not them, And so I wanted to make
(20:05):
sure I didn't embarrass them. I didn't you know, reveal
anything about them that they didn't want revealed, because this
was my journey, not theirs. So I had conversations. I
had a lot of conversations with my kids, and I
had too that thought it was really kind of cool
and fun, and you know, my thought was and I
actually had this conversation with a friend of mine. I said, God,
(20:26):
I don't know if I'm gonna I want to do this.
I'm afraid that like, in some way, it's not respecting
John's memory, it's not honoring John by going out and
doing something this kind of mist salacious, you know, it's
a little you know, a little sortied maybe or something.
You know. I didn't feel that way, but I was
afraid that other people did. And and I kind of
knew how I was going to do this process and
(20:46):
that I was going to be dignified. I was going
to be embarrassing, but I just didn't want, like to
embarrass my kids.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
One of the things that Thelma and I really took
away was the way you handled those overnight dates that
you didn't I mean, it was so elegant and so
classy and respect I mean it was it was literally
Probably my biggest takeaway was how you handle that. It
(21:12):
was amazing.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
Thank you. I put a lot of thought in that
because I didn't think it was going to be really
popular with the producers. I mean that's part of the show,
and or the guys or the guys or the guys
there's that too, But I felt like I had to
do what was right for me. And there's no in
no universe can I ever imagine sleeping with three guys
in the.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Same week, so with your kids and your friends and
your community watching the show.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
Well, I agree with that, and I think and by
the way, I would have handled it the same way.
And as as you know, Louise indicated, I thought you
were a stellar and you were. You handled it head on,
you were direct, you were vulnerable and you were amazing.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
And so transparent.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
Question for you, was there any concern because obviously you
had I mean being with the person for thirty one years,
right and being I mean there's a level of comfort there.
Were you at all concerned that this was your opportunity
to you know, be with these men and were you
concerned at all about intimacy? I don't, you know, was
(22:27):
that a priority? Obviously not to that level.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
But you know what I'm saying, I absolutely so, Like
you said, you know, it was going to be very
weird and you know, kind of out of my comfort
zone again, like dating was out of my comfort zone.
I you know, kind of did that. But getting to
that end, you think, Okay, there's obviously a physical component.
I mean, and it's certainly a message that I wanted
out there. Honestly, I didn't want like this was a
(22:51):
show about people dating in their you know, second half
of their life, and so like, I think addressing an
intimacy part of it is important because I don't want
people to think that that's not an important part of
my relationship or a relationship at this age, we know
it is, right, I Mean, it's certainly like it's certainly
something that I wanted, but I didn't want to do
it on national TV. And I think there's things that
(23:13):
you can tell about your attraction to a person that
doesn't have to take it all the way to the end.
So I mean kissing is you know, really important, and
you know, I feel like there's more, there's intimate moments
that don't require you like having sex with somebody. And
so I mean, like I knew that I was only
going to have, you know, a physical relationship with one
(23:36):
person if I ended up with somebody, and you know,
I didn't, So I know I was going to end
up with somebody, but I knew that wasn't going to
be on the table for until the end, until I
was either engaged or the show was over, and I
had just one person left, whether engaged or not. And like,
I was not going to do it before that. It
just didn't feel right to me. It's just not my
it's just not the way ever operated.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
It's interesting because it's it's you get off the show
and all of a sudden you're engaged. And so in
addition to the you know, kind of physical step, there's
so much to learn about somebody and you guys have
you know, fifty years of life experiences completely separate that
(24:15):
you really need to see if kind of your Obviously
you've learned that your core values are aligned, but there
is such a learning curve to like really to see
and to almost undo other like kind of behaviors and
different things that you navigated for so long. With John,
it's been a big it's a big thing. So it
(24:37):
was kind of like getting off the show and then
I would assume you're looking at each other and you're like,
where do we start?
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Exactly what happened? It's hilarious. So you do you take
like this leap of faith? You really do? You say? Okay,
you know, like there's so many really good things. And
like I said from the very beginning, I don't need
to be engaged at the end of this process. I
want to leave this show with a signal I can't
one person that I wanted to explore how you know,
our lives would work together, that we would work together.
(25:06):
But I did feel pretty strongly about Chocolate. I did
feel like I was in love with him, and you know,
I thought he might actually propose to me, and he did,
and I had in my mind that I would say yes.
That I was going to take this leap of faith.
I don't have to I don't have to marry him,
but it would be nice to leave this process with
the real commitment. And so I said yes, obviously when
(25:27):
he asked me to marry him. And then we went back.
We were staying on a ship, and we went back
to the ship and we went into he was in
a suite. We were with in sweets. So I went,
I went down to his suite. I changed my clothes.
But on the evening, gown went down to his suite
and had a bottle of wine there and two glasses,
and he pored him and he goes, so, tell me
about yourself. Are you nervous?
Speaker 1 (25:47):
I would have been nervous.
Speaker 2 (25:49):
I was. I'm engaged in this person. I tell liquid courage.
I did I need liquids, curds. It was like one
o'clock in the afternoon and I'm we dranking two hobitles
of wine, I think. And we really just sat there
and got to know each other. Which you talked about kids,
We talked about marriages, we talked about things that we
talked about a little bit on the show. But once again,
I didn't want to read the deal, things about my
(26:09):
kids or you know, parts of my life that would
embarrass my kids or not. You know, I wouldn't went
on TV. And he was the same way. So it
was finally our chance to just be free and open
and talk about whatever we wanted. But we were really
lucky because Batcher does a really good job of fostering
your relationship during those months where you're not public yet.
So you you know, you finish filming and you have
(26:30):
like three months before the finale and they, you know,
they get that you need to like you know, date
kind of you need to be with each other and
figure out. So we had these they're called happy couple visits,
and we had five of them, which is more than
anybody has ever had it.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Psychondrigal visits in jail.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
It's like go to jail and like, you know, having
the room, but instead it's in a beautiful home to
these beautiful airbnbs in la and you have a pool
and a tennis court and some of them. So it's
lovely and they give you food you say, we're going
to cook, and they'll get to do your grocery shopping
for you, and they just give you time to be
together and actually and that first meeting was weird also
(27:08):
because we hadn't been together in like three weeks because
we'd stop filming. But we you know, there was time.
There was a chunk of time where we couldn't see
each other for like three weeks, and then we finally
went on our first a happy couple you know weekend,
which is like a four day weekend. And I remember
I got to the house before talk and I was like,
this is so awkward, Like he's just going to come
(27:29):
even seeing him a hurdly little the.
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Guy, Well, you do look good on face time, so
hopefully you guys FaceTime regularly.
Speaker 2 (27:34):
We did a little bit. We talked a lot. We
didn't FaceTime quite as much because he would be working,
I'd be in like in my car or whatever. For
some reason, we didn't FaceTime all that much. But we
talked like five times a day. So we certainly were
getting to know each other really well. But we were
both super nervous coming into that house. And hey, I
got there first. He got there about an hour later,
and he walked in with the suitcase and he comes
(27:56):
in and he gives me a kiss, and we were
right back where we were before. So like it was
just like we didn't skip a beat. We were right
back kind of to where we were when we left,
when we were in love and we you know, we're
you know, figuring each other out. We got to that point.
So and then every visit after that and I said
we had five every time it was better and better
(28:17):
and better. We became more solid. We knew each other better,
but we still hadn't dated out like in the real world.
So we we you know, we dated in like a bubble.
So we finally, you know, after the finale started to
go you know, got to go out. We went to
New York City right at the finale and spent a
week there, and then he came to my home and
we spent time here, met some of my friends, and
(28:38):
you know, spent time with my family, and you know,
now we just kind of we kind of moved back.
We worked backwards. We got engaged.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
You guys have a rhythm, And do you feel that
when you have introduced him to your couple's friends or
the kids, Like are they open and warm? Are they judgmental?
Do you feel nervous? Do you feel uncomfort Like? How
does that play out when you bringing him into your world,
which was obviously a world with John for so long.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Yeah, it was a little in nerve wracking, and you know,
we happened our finale happened to have happened to occur
right before Thanksgiving, so it was like the second week
in November was willing they have had the finale, and
we made plans for our families to be together for Thanksgiving.
So that was really nice of him because he usually
does something else with his family for Thanksgiving. And his
(29:24):
kids said they would come, you know, to my house,
which was really nice. So both his kids came to
my house and they stayed here along with you know,
Chalk obviously was here, and we kind of merged the
families in a really kind of busy weekend where there's
a lot of other family involved, and it wasn't just
our two families. I have a big extended family, and
I wanted to respect that. You know. It was actually
(29:45):
most of the people that we get together with for
Thanksgiving is John's family, so I didn't want to change
that for my kids. Or I'm still very very very
close to my mother in law, my sister, and the
I mean they were part of my for like almost
you know, almost my whole life.
Speaker 1 (30:00):
She raised she raised you.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
You were kind of like she was. Yeah, I was
like twenty when we met.
Speaker 1 (30:06):
So how did that?
Speaker 2 (30:06):
How did that go? I mean, was it challenging?
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Was it?
Speaker 2 (30:10):
What did that look like? It was just chaotic? Honestly,
My daughter hosted it at her house and so we
all went there. So we had a couple of days
here and then Thanksgiving occurs and we all go over
to her house and there was like forty people and
it was chaotic and everybody wanted to meet Chalk and
his kids, and it was exhausting, to be totally honest,
it was a really really hard way to do it.
(30:32):
We did it all at once. It's done now now
everybody's met everybody. But it wasn't fun for me at all.
I was nervous.
Speaker 1 (30:39):
I would have been nervous on edge too the whole time.
Speaker 2 (30:42):
Yeah, And we started at like three o'clock and by
eight o'clock I was freaking exhausted. I just I was like,
we got to go. And they felt the same way.
I think we were all in bed by nine o'clock
that night. We were just it was just a long,
hard day. It's an emotional day also, because everybody it's
like there's this big pink elephant in the like he's
not John yeah, and like we all see it, so
(31:03):
like he's now like stepping, you know, stepping into the
role of being my person. And it's hard for everybody
to accept that. It was hard for me to even
present it. So that was an uncomfortable day. Did you
debrief with your children? Did you debrief with your children afterwards?
I think we've kind of had that conversation about that
being you know, like a little bit of a rider day.
(31:25):
Our kids happened to get along really well together though,
so it's kind of fun. So the next day I
had made plans for us to go to a local brewery,
which is really fun, and they had these things they
have these yurts where you can rent so which oh
my god, they're so fun. And they had big, you know,
fire pits. And it was in a town that I
grew up in, so I know everybody there and we
(31:46):
went there and that day was fun. That day was
very social. The pressure was almost off.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
It was like beyond do you feel that the fact
that both you and Chalk have experienced grief and last
part that that gave you both a deeper understanding and
a comfort level which was created more of a connection.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
Yeah. So I think that when you go through a
loss like that, that the little things become less important
and you realize that and maybe, you know, part of
that is probably maturity also that just naturally that would
have happened, but you look at like the small crap
and it just doesn't matter because because you realize how
(32:31):
how short life is, and you don't realize it until
you like come face to face with mortality, and that
doesn't happen until you know a loved one dies. If
you die or a loved one dies, that's you know,
that's the only time when you actually face it, like
with somebody like I fit, you know, I face mortality
with John and as he died, and Chalk did the
same thing with Kathy. So you have a different look
(32:55):
at life, to be honest, it's more fragile and more valuable.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
My best friend died of cancer over the pandemic, and
he has fallen in love with a widow who lost
her husband suddenly in an auto accident, and their relationship
is unbelievable to watch.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Yeah. Yeah, you value life and you value like your
moments so much more and easily so Joan, though.
Speaker 3 (33:33):
I mean, it's so fun to watch you and Chock
and you both have that sparkle in your eye and
it just seems.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Like you really really click.
Speaker 3 (33:39):
But now that you're you know, there's no more cameras
rolling all the rest and you're doing this long distance relationship, Like,
what are the challenges that come with that? And how
are you navigating kind of the distance and trying to
figure out do we move forward?
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Well, maybe she's moving to Kansas, are you?
Speaker 3 (34:01):
I thought we were meeting in New York in a
sexy pad and having fun there.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
That that is true. We are doing that. We're trying
to find a place, but it's really really hard to
find something, or to be honest, they just disappear, like
the minute they come in the market, they're gone. So
that's been a little bit of a challenge. We're still
working on that and it's still our plan. But we
also have the plan of kind of him spending time here,
me spending time in Kansas. He's been here more times
than I've been to Kansas, so I owe a Kansas trip,
(34:26):
which I'm actually making on Thursday, so I'm going there
again and then we're driving to Oklahoma to visit his father.
So I'm doing the whole mid Midwest tour next week
or this coming up week. I don't think that is
really a challenge, to be honest. Right now, we have
been fortunate, since you know we're pretty soon off the show,
(34:46):
you still have kind of opportunities. People still want to
see you around, and I'm sure all those will fade
very soon. But like iHeartRadio invited us to go to
the Jingle Ball, and you know, we've done a couple
other things. We've been invited by people to be on shows,
and like we were Drew very Moore at a couple
of weeks ago, so they invited to New York City
(35:07):
and we got to see each other there. So we
get invited to enough things right now that we organically
see each other once every couple weeks anyway, And then
we make an effort. Don't if we're not seeing each
other in every ten to fourteen days, we've planned something.
So the few times that we haven't had a reason
to meet, he's come here or we've been in New
York City, we've planned a trip. And then we just
(35:29):
got back from Cancun, so we went on a vacation together.
So we've done a good job of making sure that
we see each other. In fact, like I think we're
coming up on maybe the longest time that we haven't
seen each other, and it's feeling starting to feel kind
of crappy. But we're both really busy right now, and
like the absence makes the heart grow funder is kind
of a thing that I believe in. And when we
(35:51):
see each other, we're really happy to see each other,
like we are, We're like newlyweds, you know, We're like,
we need to be together at that point, and it
feels so good.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
No, that makes sense. Do you think that people that
are looking for their chapter two should be more open
to long distance dating? It opens up more options?
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Absolutely, and I wasn't. So I think I've learned a
lot from this experience. I have kind of a philosophy
and I talked about this. Actually before I went on
the show, CNN asked to interview me, and it was
right after Gary and Teresa had broken up. It was right,
it was fresh off the break up, and it was fresh.
It was actually they interviewed me like right the day
(36:30):
that I was announced that I was going to be
the Golden Bachelor of the day after. So it aired
the day after and they asked, I said, what are
you going to do? Like obviously this distance thing is
what caused that marriage to break up. You know, how
are you going to handle it? And I said, well,
I just want to put it out there right now
that I am not moving from Maryland. I have three
grandkids here, I have four kids that live there. I
am and I have a ninety two year old mother
(36:52):
and an eighty six year old mother in law that
I can't leave. So I am not leaving Maryland. So
if somebody thinks that they're coming on the show and
I am going to change that, that is not going
to happen. But I do realize that then that's a
whole different conversation. And it's going to take a lot
of effort to make this relationship work. And it's going
to be required that you know, you have to make
(37:12):
sure that your schedules are you know, you're going to
match your schedules. It's going to require travel, it's going
to require an effort to see each other, and I
am so willing to do that. I will bend over
backwards to make sure that that part we take care of.
So it's just a kind of a you know, you
have to look at it in a little bit of
different way. But I also in my mind thought, this
is like really a bad thing.
Speaker 1 (37:34):
You sound like Selma, Yeah, is that Yalma loves long distance.
Speaker 3 (37:38):
I love long distance, And I feel like having a
chapter one that was very traditional and it was wonderful,
but again, I think there's so many more variables in
chapter two, with families and kids and lives, lives and jobs,
and I was just going to say, I mean, are
you seeking a more non traditional relationship kind of? And
(38:00):
I don't mean there's not the connection in the bond
and all of that, but just the day to day
you know, it doesn't have to be under one roof,
like are you seeking something different this chapter? So I'm
not sure.
Speaker 2 (38:10):
If I'm seeking anything yet, but it's playing out in
the way I kind of expected to because I know
that Truck still has a business in Kansas, and I
still have grand kids, and I'm busy too. I feel
like we couldn't have the best of both the world.
So if I have something important going on here, he
has no problem playing here and doing what I need
(38:32):
to do. Or if I have something like I'm doing
this wine collaboration in California, so he and I are like,
we're meeting in California because it's kind of a fun
thing to do, kind of a.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
Sexy jet setting life.
Speaker 2 (38:42):
And people see this as a negative. I think it's
actually really fun. I think it's hugely a positive for us.
Right now we have all these really cool experiences together.
And maybe i'd see one day, you know, maybe next year,
maybe they reactor, maybe five years from now. Then I'm
going to go like, Okay, you know, it'd be nice
to have you around, like to cook dinner together and
to like start living a more normal life. But right now,
(39:05):
this is really fun and I am not looking to
change it, and.
Speaker 3 (39:08):
It's probably been I would think, is it been helpful
for your children, because I mean life has changed. You
obviously have a loved one now, but it's probably nice
that they still have you to themselves occasionally and you
know the routine of what was pre Chock.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Yeah, I think you're right, Like it hasn't been a
big up people to their lives. It hasn't changed all
that much. Like I'll go away for a week at
a time or ten days at a time and then
be home for a week or two weeks at a time,
and so it's a little different, but it's not a
lot different. But the difference is they really like it
when Chalk comes here because they really like him. He's
just a fun, easy person of the round. Yeah. So
(39:45):
he stays here and you know, we come down for
you know, like to have coffee in the morning, and
you know, one of my kids will be here, and
I feel like they like him maybe more than like me.
They really have fun.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
So he fits. He really he really fits, and.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
He has a great since humor, is fun to be around.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
He's also has a very calming what I mean. He
has such a calming energy about him. And when I
looked at the two of you when we were all
in Pebble Beach, I saw the excitement and the attraction,
but I saw peace, like a real kind of peaceful
connection with the two of you, where you guys just
felt safe with each other.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
That's like such a great way to put it, because
that was something that when John passed away, I felt
like floating, untethered, like I just was like it was
just me. Even though I have a great family and
I have so much love in my life. I felt
very alone and that it was like me against the world,
and he grounds me. I don't feel that way anymore.
(40:43):
I feel like I have my person and that he
makes me feel safe. I felt like he grounded me.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
We interviewed him at Pebble Beach and he was full
of sage advice and you can tell he's one of
those guys that it's not that he needs to be
the center of attention and speak all the time.
Speaker 1 (41:01):
He has a quiet confidence, but.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
When he does speak, it really resonates with you. And
if anyone hasn't watched that episode, I would encourage them
to do so because I think it was so interesting
to talk to all three of the bachelor's when we
git them and they're different takes on everything.
Speaker 2 (41:17):
It was. It was really it was.
Speaker 3 (41:19):
I think it was really helpful for us as when
there are different john we talk.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
A lot in our friends group about sharing or recycling men.
Were there any of the men that were in either
you know in your season that you would kind of
pivot to one of your friends or single friends.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Yeah, kind of. So there was a thought for me
that and not just I didn't just think about it
was like a subject, you know, conversation subject with the
Golden Bachelor women. So the women that came off of
Gary season, so there were twenty one of us, they
were all very interested in when I came home from
(42:03):
Golden Bachelorette, and I really couldn't talk about like who
had gone and who didn't until on the show you
could see that they had been eliminated, and then I
could kind of address relationships for each one of those
people as they got eliminated. You became a match maker,
and I became the matchmaker. I did, and I would
be getting messages the next day, like after the show aired,
So whoever got let go that night, people would be like,
(42:25):
what do you think? Do you think that he would
like me? Would would you think we're being a good match?
And I definitely had some matches and I actually worked
on several. Unfortunately none of them really worked out. The
guys on my season rescued a little younger than the
women on Gary season because I was younger. Gary was
seventy and I was sixty interesting and so yeah, so
(42:48):
the ages didn't match up. I had guys the age
from fifty seven and the oldest one on my season
was sixty nine and it was Pascal and he was
by far the oldest. I think the next one to
him was maybe closer to like sixty six of it,
and the most of my guys.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
Are really good for his age though.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
Yeah, yeah, he's very fit. He's a good looking guy.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
So it sounds like you dated a little bit before
obviously the Golden Bachelorette, and you dated several men on
the Golden Bachelorettes, so you definitely are are are a
force and have probably a lot of advice to give
what red like subtle red flags do you think that
people ignore when looking at chapter two?
Speaker 1 (43:26):
Dating?
Speaker 2 (43:26):
So, I think people have like a tendency to date
a certain type. So some people like the bad boys,
some people you know, you kind of are attracted to something,
and it's always pretty consistent, like who you're attracted to.
I think that the smartest thing to do when you're
dating is to try to get away from those because
if you've been dating for a long time and it
(43:48):
hasn't worked out, it's probably because you're not looking for
the right kind of person.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
You sound like the j Sheetty podcast that was on
today with Jillian Tareki, which was all about what you're
basically saying right now, which is date differently than what
you've done if it hasn't been working.
Speaker 2 (44:03):
I really strongly about that, because I too have a
tendency to date like a certain kind of guy. I've
been Actually, Chalk is very much like my late husband John.
So I actually I think I'm a good picker, but
I'm not sure. I've seen a lot of people who
aren't good pickers, who particularly the people that like the
bad boy and like I feel like, Okay, that's something
great to do when you're in high school in college,
(44:24):
but when you're looking for a relationship that's a bad guy,
that's not the person you want where they like a playboy.
So you know, past girl is a bit of a playboy.
You know, I wasn't going to pick him because I
knew that about him. He self eliminated. That was all good.
All of that worked out the way it was supposed to.
I feel like red flags are the way you're dating
not and the way you pick because you have a
(44:47):
tendency to pick the same kind of person I certainly do.
I that both of you do, and that you should
like widen your your net a little bit. You know,
I heard a podcast recently about fixing your profile on
a dating app and that you should widen the people
(45:08):
that you're accepting messages from, so like make it a
bigger age gap that that you say are okay, or
don't specify religion or don't specify a number of miles
that they need to be within, Like why did all
of those parameters? So you get introduced to more people
and you'll have a better likelihood of finding somebody better
(45:28):
or sending a better match for you.
Speaker 3 (45:30):
Yeah, that's insightful because I feel like when you think
of red flags, you're always thinking about looking at other
people and their red flags, right, But it's really what
you're saying is it might be within us.
Speaker 1 (45:40):
You need to listen to that podcast Filma. That's what
it was today. So, Joan, did you have speaking of
red flags and me and bad Boys, did you have
crazy wild butterflies the minute you met Schoks. I know
a lot of people say that butterflies can be almost
a warning signal, and I'm so I'm always trying to
(46:01):
sit with myself on a date and say, you know, butterflies,
no butterflies, good thing, bad saying what do you think?
Speaker 2 (46:08):
So I did have butterflies, which is really good. So
when he stepped down the limbo, I thought, Okay, now
that's a good looking guy. He's a great dresser. I
think he's a good dresser too. He's a good dresser.
He doesn't and he doesn't know. He thinks he's not
a good dresser, but he is very really good. You
have to look really good enclosed. He also looks good
out of close, but he and because he's tall and
he's pretty thin, so and he's in shape. He has
(46:30):
really wide shoulders, broad shoulders which just kind of just
make your body just look good anyway. So I close
hangs so well like that, yeah, hangs in like it
just like has a presence kind of about you. Like
it's like like there's a man, you know. So I
liked him when I go out of the limbo. When
I really really liked him is kind of when I
needed to feel a comfort and was at Disneyland, and
(46:53):
that was you know, that was a a kind of
a stressful as a first date. So I was stressed.
I was, I was, I was really nervous. And I
came in on this like little train thingy and they
dropped me off from the plane on the train platform
and he's standing there and I immediately felt again the
word safe with him, and I thought he was really sexy.
(47:14):
And he put his arm around me and he made
me feel comfortable and I had butterflies, and I was like,
this is really good. And that date was phenomenal. Probably
the best date I've ever went.
Speaker 1 (47:22):
On was that before he left? Was that before he
So were you sad when he left?
Speaker 2 (47:28):
Like?
Speaker 1 (47:28):
Did you think he was going to come back?
Speaker 2 (47:30):
I was devastated when he left, Okay, And.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
That's a sign too that you knew you liked him.
Speaker 2 (47:35):
That was the day I knew that he was the guy.
Speaker 3 (47:38):
Oh my, I was going to ask you that I
was going to ask you because I feel like it
was obvious. I mean it was written Oliver's face that
he was just enamored with you. And I also think
it was kind of ironic that the most pedestrian of dates,
no offense to the bachelor, you know what I mean,
that you had you had like that was the most
pedestrian of all the dates, and that was your guy,
you know, I mean, it wasn't like flying off in
(47:59):
the hell copter or doing anything super sex Well.
Speaker 1 (48:02):
Also Joan had left her show too. You just didn't
come back, and so that was the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
I when I came to the mansion that day was
literally you know, like you know, very soon after our date,
and he was standing waiting outside for me, and I
was like, that's exactly what they had me do when
I had to tell Gary I was leaving. It was exactly.
And there was that bench was sitting right there, which
was the exact same bench I sat on and had
to say goodbye to Gary. And I was like, oh,
(48:29):
something is going something is not good here, but this
is bizarre. I was going to the mansion to go
on a date with with Jordan. I had a date
that day. I was arriving at the at the mansion
to go on a date and there was standing talk
is standing there at the front door waiting for me,
and he said, Hey, can I talk to you for
a minute. I'm like, that's exactly what I said to Gary, Hey,
I need to talk to you for a minute. And
(48:49):
we sat down on the bench and he said, I
had a very importunate thing happened last night. I knew
his mom was really sick. So my mom passed and
you know, I need some help figuring out what I
should do. And I was like, you have to go there.
And so he had a stepfather elderly, and I said,
you need to go see your stepfather. And so he
decided he was going to do that, and that's absolutely
(49:09):
the right decision. But when he walked away, I remember
and he said, I will be back. I'm coming back,
and I thought, yeah, he thinks he's coming back. I
thought I was coming back, and I know.
Speaker 3 (49:18):
I mean, he couldn't get back there fast enough though.
I'm sure that he did tend to his family, but
I felt like he must have taken somebody the concourse
back like he. I felt like he was like he
was back, and I was like, he was not.
Speaker 2 (49:27):
Going to let this opportunity go. I thank god because
he left, and I, you know, I had to function
that day. I had to go on the date, and
you know, I didn't want to. I needed to be
true to that guy, to Jordan. You know, he was
excited he had a date, and I, you know, I
did the best I could to have a great time,
and I think we did a great your heart, but
I was worried the whole time that I that chalk
(49:50):
wasn't going to come back. And in my mind, when
I finally got to like be off a date and
like have some time to think, I my mind said,
he doesn't know if he can come back, And how
in the world I am I going to do this
whole journey because right now, like he was like number
one in my mind, I said, I will have this
unanswered question forever.
Speaker 1 (50:10):
Would have changed the course of the entire show?
Speaker 2 (50:13):
Who would have changed the course of the entire show?
And I am not positive I would have gotten to
an ending of picking somebody. I think I might have,
just he would be too big of a question market
I had. I don't think I could have gotten all
the way to the end and found somebody else. He
was pretty clearly the guy that I like had kind
of honed in on. But I was also really careful
as we were filming because I thought that really early on.
(50:36):
I thought that at the Disneyland date that this was
pretty a really good date and that he I felt
really good about him. But I know that people do
that a lot on Bauchler, and they kind of hone
in on a person and they get like four weeks
in and discover that that person is not the person
they thought that he was or she was, and that
then they have to pivot and they don't have very
much time then to establish another good relationship. So I
(50:59):
was really careful that every person I dated, every every
date or every interaction, I treated them like they were
the person. Like I was really you know, making sure
I got to do them really well and was giving them,
you know, I gave everybody like an equal chance, even
though in my mind I did feel like Chalk was
the person.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
That's really good advice for the for the future bachelor's
and bachelorettes to give everybody their day in.
Speaker 3 (51:24):
Court, and you did, and I felt like everybody felt
that and was they They constantly I think told you
how appreciative they were that they had your full attention.
Speaker 2 (51:32):
I feel like I really got to know some amazing men,
and like that's part of the journey also, is that
even though you don't pick everybody, at the end, you
end up with these really like unique friendships that you've
gone through this weird journey of dating, and like they
are your all your old boyfriends, which is just kind
of a funny thing to say, because we all don't
(51:53):
really feel that way. I mean, you know, it's a
it's a quick journey. It's only eight weeks. You never
get bad and beaded in somebody unless they're like the
person that you're picking. So everything is like you hold
back a little bit so you don't dive like totally
in and they hold back a little bit too.
Speaker 1 (52:10):
You have to.
Speaker 2 (52:10):
You have to protect your heart.
Speaker 3 (52:11):
It's like it was college again. It was like watching
college again.
Speaker 1 (52:14):
It was fun.
Speaker 3 (52:15):
But it's been so amazing to talk to you.
Hosts And Creators
Amy Robach
T.J. Holmes
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