Looking for love on reality TV can’t be an easy thing (as Grant Ellis is about to find out when The Bachelor premieres on the 2025 TV schedule), and yet, Katie Thurston built her career doing just that. The former Bachelorette was thrice unsuccessful in finding her forever person in front of the dating show cameras, but it wasn’t like she could just hit the apps anonymously anymore. Thurston opened up about the biggest change she had to make, and I was actually surprised by her perspective.
America first met Katie Thurston when she appeared as a sex-positive contestant on Matt James’ season of ABC’s dating show in 2020, armed with her trusty purple vibrator. She went on to to lead Season 17 of The Bachelorette, and in 2023 she was one of the leads of The CW’s FBoy Island. After the last of those relationships ended, a lot was different about the way she had to approach finding a partner, and in Q&A on her Instagram Stories, she revealed the biggest change, writing:
Having a large audience was the biggest shift in how I dated. I wanted someone who wasn’t intimidated by my large audience or excited to use my large audience. If you have dirt, those skeletons will make its way to me pretty quickly (and for the best).
After appearances on three reality dating shows (not to mention her guest role on Bachelor in Paradise), Katie Thurston had gained hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers, and plenty of her fans were invested in her love story. Not only did she have to find someone who was OK with her being a public figure in that way, she had to make sure any prospective partner wasn’t using her for her newfound fame.
That seems like a huge burden, especially with fans who are used to getting such an intimate look at her relationships, so I was surprised by that second part of her answer, where she suggests she’s grateful that her followers have been quick to alert her to any red flags in the guys she’s posted with. I would think it would be such a pain to deal with DMs regarding any and all potential boyfriends, but she admits it was for the best that she was able to have them basically vetted by the general public.
Of course, it seems she learned her lesson from that, too, as she continued:
I also learned not to post a guy within the first 90 days of dating (it often ended within this exploration phase). Posting a guy too soon has led me to extend a relationship far beyond its expiration date in order to avoid embarrassment.
I guess you can’t have it both ways. Putting a relationship out there for public consumption too soon can put a lot of pressure on it, and if the spark ends up fizzling anyway, it was all for nothing. However, waiting until things are a little more serious before hard-launching a new fella also means she doesn’t have the opportunity for those skeletons to be unearthed in a timely manner.
Thankfully for Katie Thurston, she doesn’t have to worry about that anymore. She’s now engaged to fellow comedian Jeff Arcuri after meeting him earlier in 2024.
After competing for Matt James’ heart on The Bachelor, Thurston got engaged to Blake Moynes during a dramatic Bachelorette finale that included her accusing contestant Greg Grippo of lying and gaslighting. She ultimately called off her engagement and began dating John Hersey, another contestant from her season, before that also ended and she went on FBOY Island.
Maybe reality TV didn’t lead directly to love, but it got her fame, as well as a pretty positive perspective on the upside of a public relationship.
