MAFS' Johnny and Kerry reveal bombshell about their time on the show

They’re one of only seven Married At First Sight couples who are still together after filming the reality show, but it turns out Johnny and Kerry Balbuziente weren’t originally matched with each other in the experiment.

The season eight intruders, who officially got married in January, reveal to Yahoo Lifestyle that Johnny almost had a completely different experience on MAFS.

“I don’t think anyone really knows this story, but I was supposed to marry someone else,” he shares. “I had flown into Sydney early, and the girl that I was supposed to be matched with dropped out the night before the bucks party.

“I was so nervous and I had a shower and a shave and I got into bed and I was like, ‘Okay, get a good night's sleep and we start this process tomorrow’. And then the executive producer called me at nine o’clock and told me the news.”

Rather than flying back home to Brisbane or leaving the experiment altogether, the producers offered Johnny accommodation in Sydney for five weeks while they found him another match.

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Meanwhile, Kerry was given just four days’ notice to leave her life on the Sunshine Coast and fly to Sydney so she could walk down the aisle to Johnny.

“I had applied and went the whole way through [the application process] and they were like, ‘You'll know by August if you’re on’,” she details. “August came and went and I was like, ‘Eh, I didn’t get on, no big deal’ and I got on with my life.

“And then I got a phone call out of the blue on a Tuesday in September and it was like, ‘You’re on but you’ve got to go by Saturday’. So I had to pack up my life and hand over my full-time job and all of that.”

“If that’s not fate, I have no idea what is,” Johnny remarks. “I’m eternally grateful.”

'The track record is terrible'

Across ten seasons of MAFS, Kerry and Johnny are one of seven couples who are still in a relationship after the show.

This includes season two’s Erin Bateman and Bryce Mohr, season six’s Jules Robinson and Cam Merchant and Martha Kalifatidis and Michael Brunelli, fellow season eight couple Bryce Ruthven and Melissa Rawson, and season ten’s Melissa Willis and Layton Mills and Tahnee Cook and Ollie Skelton.

Speaking about the fact that there were only three success stories when they entered the experiment themselves, Johnny admits he was sceptical about how things would work out.

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“You’ve got to be super naive to go on a show like MAFS and actually think you're going to find the one because the track record is terrible,” he remarks. “I think you've got to go in there expecting the worst but hoping for the best, and we’re living proof of that.

“The first night actually when the cameras went away, both of us had sort of the same speech prepared sitting in bed together,” Kerry adds.

“We just said, I don't want to ruin my life over this. We've got good families and jobs and friends to go back to and both of us just sort of agreed from the get-go that we’d look out for each other and look after each other, and we bloody did. It was the perfect foundation for our relationship and he never let me down.”

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