Joan Vassos says she was not looking for the man she would marry on the first night of The Golden Bachelorette. She was looking for the six men she needed to send home.
The 61-year-old private school administrator from Rockville, Maryland, who became the first-ever Golden Bachelorette in 2024 after leaving Gerry Turner’s season because of a family emergency, said on the Two Be Continued... podcast shared on Instagram that she had never said that out loud before. “I’m gonna tell you something that I haven’t ever said before,” she said, adding that night one was about making “really important decisions really, really quickly” because she had just one evening to do it.
That night mattered because the first rose ceremony on season 1 set the tone for everything that followed. Vassos had asked producers if she could keep all of the contestants so she could get to know them better, but they said no. She had to eliminate six men immediately, and one of the people she nearly cut ended up in her final four. That man was Chock Chapple, the 60-year-old insurance executive from Wichita, Kansas, whom she later got engaged to at the end of the season.
Vassos said Chapple almost went home because he was so nervous. “He was shaking. He had sweaty palms. He couldn’t remember anything that he had planned to say,” she said. She compared that to her own experience on Golden Bachelor, when her mind went blank and she rambled after getting up there. But she said she was glad she kept him around because he “ended up being really great.” Her final four also included Guy Gansert, Pascal Ibgui and Jordan Heller.
There was another elimination that came faster. Vassos said one man was “a little creepy” and said something that bothered her, though she would not reveal the conversation. That, she said, made the decision easier than the others. The rest of the season played out from there: Ibgui self-eliminated during the final three, Heller finished fourth, and Vassos and Chapple left engaged. They are still together today and split their time between Maryland and Kansas as they look for another place for just the two of them in New York City.
For Vassos, the admission sharpens what her season already showed: the first rose ceremony was not a romantic reveal, but a rapid test of instinct. And in her case, the man who nearly became an early cut is now the man she is building a life with.