Yahoo Lifestyle 'Golden Bachelorette' Joan Vassos Reveals Why Her Wedding Plans Have Been Put on Hold (Exclusive)
The Golden Bachelorette Joan Vassos is thoroughly enjoying her post-show life with fiancé Chock Chapple! As fans know, beautiful blonde Joan instantly clicked with insurance executive Chock, and he was her final pick at the end of the ABC reality show last fall.
To find love again, Joan had to overcome feeling guilty about the memory of her late husband, John Vassos. The father of her four grown children died of pancreatic cancer in Jan. 2021. Joan and Chock got engaged during the Golden finale and they have been traveling to see each other ever since, as she lives in Rockville, Maryland, and he resides in Wichita, Kansas.
“I fall more and more in love with him every day,” Joan confided to Parade in an exclusive interview. “He has a great sense of humor. He’s an easy person to be around. He’s funny. My kids adore him. My grandson, [the] last time Chock was leaving, he said, ‘I don’t want that guy to go.’ He requires nothing. And he’s very kind. He loves his friends. He loves his family, and he makes sure you know he loves you.”
But Joan revealed that their wedding plans have been put on hold for now.
“I am planning on marrying him. I don’t know if it’s this year,” she said via Zoom. “I mean, likely it is [this year, but] we are so busy. Busy that I had never expected…We get the opportunity to do so many things now.”
Related: Golden Bachelorette Joan Vassos Reveals Her Plan for Dealing With Distance in Relationships
The former private school administrator told Parade, “Planning a wedding is just not on the schedule right now. It just seems like it would be an overwhelming thing to add to all that we’re already doing. And plus, we’re just really enjoying doing this, getting to do all these things but also being at each other’s homes, meeting each other’s friends, getting to know each other’s families.”
Joan explained that she was speaking from Carmel, California, where she and Chock, 61, were getting ready to make a public appearance at the AT&T Pebble Beach golf tournament as guests of IHeart Radio. Joan and Chock have been social butterflies– and she is also now promoting the pain relief company Aspercreme!
The Golden Bachelorette star, who recently turned 62, is constantly traveling, running after her grandkids and exercising. She's noted that all her activities take a toll. "At the end of the day, I’m a little more achy. I’m not feeling like I did when I was younger, but I don’t want that to stop me. I feel like I have a really long future ahead of me and I don’t want pain to limit what I’m doing.”
Joan was packing her Aspercreme for a romantic vacation in Cancun, Mexico with Chock at the beginning of February. The couple also recently traveled to New York, where they attended a Broadway show. Chock even bought Joan some designer clothes for her Jan. 11 birthday!
Related: The Bachelor’s Grant Ellis Opens Up About His Tragic Family Loss (Exclusive)
“We went out to a couple of really nice dinners, and then we went clothes shopping, because that’s what I love!” she gushed. “In New York City, you can find some good clothes. So he bought me a couple of cute new outfits. I love Ramy Brook, and I love Alice + Olivia. So [he] did a little purchasing in both those stores.”
Joan and Chock adore the city and have previously talked about buying a home in New York together. But she sighed to Parade that it hasn’t happened yet: “Boy, the inventory is low. It’s been a lot harder than we thought. But we’re also not in a huge hurry. We want the right place, so we’re not just settling. We have a great realtor and she’s working for us. She said that the inventory certainly grows a lot or it becomes an easier market in the spring, so we’re probably looking a few more months before we find a place but we’re still out there looking. We’re spending a lot of time there. We just go into hotels.”
She said that so far, they haven’t spent more than 10-14 days apart in their commuter relationship.
“We definitely are spending a lot of time together,” Joan noted. “We’re going to be together for Valentine’s Day. We don’t have any big plans yet. We’re going to be in Philadelphia. He’s going to fly to Philadelphia. I’m probably going to drive up. It’s just a two-hour drive for me. It’s my son’s girlfriend’s 30th birthday, so he’s having a surprise party for her, and so we’re all going up there to surprise her…on Saturday. Valentine’s Day is that Friday; we’ll probably go out to dinner in the city.”
In an interview right after The Golden Bachelorette ended, Joan told Parade that Chock surprised her with his habit of napping. When asked what more she’s learned about her fiancé, she laughed, “He still loves to nap!”
But there’s much more, she added: “He’s literally the easiest person to have around. He requires nothing. He is just go with the flow, he doesn’t get mad about anything, he stresses about nothing, which is so weird to me because I’m a little type A and I stress about everything. Like, I wake up in the middle of the night and go, ‘Oh, my God, did I give my son the five dollars I borrowed from him?’ Stupid stuff. I wake up in the middle of the night and I’m Venmo-ing him five dollars! Chock [is] just, ‘Everything is fine. It all works out.’ I worry about my seat assignment for my next flight a month from now. He’s like, ‘You’ll get a seat. Don’t worry about it.’ He’s so easy about life. Nothing stresses him out, which is so good for me because I’m a stressed person. I’ve discovered that the things that are opposites for us are really complementary, work well for us. He teases me constantly!”
However, Joan, who told Parade before The Golden Bachelorette began about her "no sex" fantasy suites plan, admitted Chock’s sense of humor can make her cringe.
“One embarrassing thing: He loves to make jokes when he spends the night at [my] house,” she told Parade. “At the house, his first night we spent, we come down, and we’re sitting at my counter. And I’m making coffee for us, my daughter is there. And she said, ‘Oh, Chock, how did you sleep last night?’ And he goes, “Uh, your mother kept me up all night.' I was like, 'This is so embarrassing!' Which was a lie, he just thought it was really funny. He thinks it’s funny to make sex jokes to my kids. Not gross ones, but he just thinks it’s funny. And I’m like, ‘You’ve got to stop that.’ “
Joan continued, “And then he has a thing that he ribs me about all the time. I have a really big thing about my cell phone charger, that if you take it out of the outlet I have it plugged into, I go ballistic. It’s the only thing I get upset about. And he did it one day and he had it upstairs in the bathroom, he was shaving. I was like, ‘You have my cell phone charger!’ He was like, ‘I thought you were going to kill me.’ “
The willowy reality TV star said they both love to stay in shape but don’t work out together.
“He’s a gym guy. He does guy stuff like bigger weights. I’m not particularly a gym person. I always work out at home. I’m way more likely to work out if I can just go down to my basement and put on YouTube videos,” she said. “I do different ones every day. I love that about YouTube. I’ll say, ‘arm workout for women with dumbbells’ or whatever with hand held and it will give me ten people to do. There’s a few women I like to do it with. I’ll pick a video I like, and I’ll do an arm workout almost every day because I’m trying not to have the old lady flabby arms. And I usually do an ab workout. Recently, I’ve been doing a lower body [workout] a little bit, trying to get the beach body a little better.”
For more exercise, she said, “I take my grandkids around. I bring them to the park. I give them piggyback rides. I teach them how to ride a bike. I walk my dog. So the cardio part just happens by doing things I like to do.”
Joan was looking forward to looking good on the beach in Mexico and said, “I always wear bikinis. I’m a little bit blessed. I have a decent metabolism, and I’m pretty careful. I like healthy food–other than, I do have a little chocolate thing, so I eat chocolate every day. I don’t say no to myself, but I have a pretty healthy lifestyle.”
The first-ever Golden Bachelorette exulted to Parade, “I’ve always been about staying active. I love traveling now. I’ve always had a million places I want to see. I have a huge bucket list and I finally have a fiancé that I get to do that with. I have a travel buddy.”
Related: Does Golden Bachelor Star Theresa Nist Get to Keep Her $40,000 Engagement Ring?
