Hey guys, it's Jackie and Jen and we are two Jersey Jays. I feel like we haven't recorded an episode in a little while. We haven't, right, I know, our last episode was on New Year's Day? And what which feels like a millionaire Jens ago? What a year January has been. I mean, it is there are there more has happened in January of twenty five than I think what happened in all of twenty four.
It's wild, it is.
It is. Tell me what's going on with you? Tell me about your jam.
Personally, everything is fine, the kids are good. Aiden finally got back. I know if you haven't followed the journey of my injured son. He broke his leg a year ago.
This week. He broke his leg that night we were at the Madonna concert.
Donna concert, right, and he's a very competitive basketball player. Got back in in May, and then broke his shoulder in July, and so he just went back in last week to the games, and so it's like a whole new world. I love watching play. So you always said that you love really sports. Great, but I have a an infection on my toe. So I got to go to the post today and get it cut open seeing your friend, your friend.
Jill, Jill. Oh nice, yeah, very nice. What's going on with you?
I just got back from Florida. The weather was crappy there, but it's certainly crappier here. So one of my very dear friends turned fifty. Which it's hard to imagine that I'm friends with a fifty year old, because that just seems I'm friends with you, and you're forty seven.
You're not that far past fifty six.
Believe me, you will see fifty six.
Okay, forty seven.
Still right, Jack, forty eight, forty eight, forty eight, forty eight to fifty six, all right, you'll tell me when you turn fifty six. But it's it is. There's a spread there, and there's and so my dear friend, we all there are a bunch of us from here. She used to living Upper Saddle River. We all went there. She was in Bocan now and she made it a ton of new friends, and a lot of them are younger, and so were there, and we're all dolled up, and
the whole thing. I'm looking around, looking to the left, looking at the right, there are these beautiful to me young women, and I'm like almost like pointing my finger at her. I'm like, what have you? What if you got me into? Why am I here and not here with these young gorgeous whatever. I was just being I was just kidding around. But it's funny.
Did she moved to Boca because she was empty nesting?
And she just no, no, no.
Our kids were actually going into like their senior year of high school. She moved to the Yes, and maybe it was maybe it was Gane and Jesse's junior year right, which you would think it was the best move she ever made. There were a ton of reasons why she did it. She's an unbelievable mother, and I have to say it just it could not have worked out better for them. The kids love it, loved it, They acclimated it very easily, made a ton of friends, and she absolutely loves being there.
So oh great, Yeah, that okay.
Cool.
You know, I thought of another topic that we should tackle another time because I went on this little hair journey and so my hair is getting this is a middle aged woman. Shit, my hair is getting so thin. You don't have that problem, but I do have any problem. Oh well, your hair looks so like thick and we have extensions. No, no, I never thought, but like I never thought I would need extensions, well like even in
the front though, you see, like I'm so thin. So anyway, so I tried this medication my my colorist, who I've been with for over twenty years. I love him so much, and uh, he said to me, have you ever tried low dose monoxidale? And I said, Uh, it's like rogaine, isn't it. Yeah, well, it's like it's a medication. And so I called my dermatologist, who I love, and she said, yeah, it works great. I said any side effects? She said, you could get some bloating. So of course I'm one
of the few percent. I got so freaking bloated. Most people do not. I got so bloated, like my rings wouldn't go on my finger as we so feeling. After two weeks, I went off of it, but I was upset because at that point I was like, you know, for two weeks, I was like, oh, I'm gonna have Blake Lively hair, you know, and maybe not Blake Lively.
Oh well maybe not right now.
And so I went off and I was like, you know what, I want to do something, but I have no idea what I can do?
What about I started, what about neutralil?
Yes?
No, no, no, I've been on neutrophall for seven years and it's fabulous.
But I think at a certain.
Point it just turns into a vitamin and like it stops. I don't know, I could be wrong.
Don't sue me.
Attend you take biotine.
Well, that's part of neutrofall. So I but I wanted something stronger. I don't want a vitamin. I don't want to mess around. I want, like, I want to do something real. So I was thinking to myself, God, there's so many women who have this problem and who don't know what the hell they can do about it. So I think we should do an episode on all there are so many things you can do for thinning hair. So I actually it's funny. I called this one place
and they were just so hungry to sell me. Like everything they were selling, they convinced me over the phone that I needed a hair transplant. I was without seeing you, without seeing oh. I had to send them pictures of my head.
But I I.
Literally for for a few hours, was like, Okay, I'm going to get a hair transplant.
And then I was like, wait a second, really don't need a hair transplant. I got news to you.
I have a friend who did do that, a woman, a woman. They when they did, they put the needles into your scalp.
That's that's something different. That's different. That's what I ended up doing. Oh, you did that very past. So I went somewhere local. I went for a console. It's called PRP, Yes and Yes, and they said I was the perfect candidate because it's really interesting.
I know our guest is coming on in a few minutes, but I'll just tell you.
So they they took three D images of my head and they showed me that a healthy follicle.
So your follicles have to be like alive.
And active in order for PRP to work, because what they do they draw your blood and they inject your blood back into the follicle to get it like really growing again. But they took three D images of my head and they showed me that each follicle should have two pieces of hair growing out of it, and mine have one.
A lot of mine have won.
So I had my first round of PRP eight days ago, and it was fantastic. You go for four months, one treatment a month, and and then your hair starts really growing back in hurt.
I hurt. My friend said it was very painful.
It was not.
It was only five minutes. I have a super strong pain threshold, by the way, but it was it wasn't so bad.
And the next few days your head to like a tiny bit sore.
But I'm really really excited about it.
But we should do an episode about so many pe people reached out to me because I put it on my Instagram right about like, oh my god, I'm dying to know if it works because I have such a thinning hair.
All of this ties in beautifully to our topic and in terms of talking to our guests today, because it's all about the Asian process, and it's all about you know, what happens, and it's all about you know, the things that are great about it, the things that are difficult about it. You know, we started this podcast, as you of course know, with the idea that we would talk about what happens as you get older as a woman, you know, reaching forty eight, reaching fifty six. Our guest
is a little bit older than that. But how to handle all those changes, It is not easy. It is so challenging.
So we have Joan Vassos, who was the Golden Bachelorette, and it's not.
So much today.
I mean, we'll ask some questions about the Bachelerette, of course, but I'm really interested in the whole process of dating in your sixties, of finding love as a widow when you still you know, there's one thing about you know, getting divorced that's not easy, but you are almost ready to move on and to you know, reclaim your life. I imagine being a widow, it's different. It feels different because you never fell out of love, you know.
Yeah. I mean, I my mom has gone through divorce and she was widowed, and I think both you know, she was actually very open having had been through both those experiences. I think she, you know, my mom is a woman who wants to spend her life with someone and wants to be married, So, you know, I don't know. Yeah,
I'm sure it is very different. I'm sure there are people that get divorced and they're like, I will never get married again, you know, or even more, who knows, well, Joan is going to be able to tell us a little bit more about what that felt like. But we have so many questions for her and she is so
a rock star. She is you know. Also, she's so beautiful really just really in terms of like you know, we're talking about hair thinning, like she this is a woman who is on top of whatever her beauty secrets are.
You know, I was like staring at her hair.
I do this thing where I stare at people's hair, like because I'm so entranced by like how it's so different from person to person, even when off the topic, like all the ship that's going on with uh Lively and Justin Baldoni. Every time there's a headline, like I read the headline and then I stare at her hair.
It's crazy, Like I can't get over her hair.
Dustin does.
So I am super excited.
You're right, she's beautiful, she's elegant, well spoken, and I can't wait.
To talk to her.
So to me too.
Let's bring hi.
Hello, Hi, how's it going?
It's going? How is it going for you? Lady?
It's all the Jay's yes, Jersey j oh yeah, you're j two.
You want to be our third a man. We're so excited to have you here. Thank you for coming.
I certainly are, thank you for wanting to talk to me. We were just talking about how beautiful you are. So we're gonna be superficial for the first part of this and just because you just are. But also, you know, we talk a lot about women of a certain age, and Jackie was just talking about her hair and her hair thinning as she's noticed that she's getting older. But anyway, the point is, you are so gorgeous. Just give us
before we even start. We need a couple of your secrets, lady, Like, what are you doing.
I'm gonna be totally honest of botox, Yes, good makeup. I think I finally after a lot of years, in the last maybe five years, actually paying attention to like the face regimen. You know. You know, for years I just put whatever moisturizer was in my cabinet on, and now I kind of I do the vitamin A and vitamin C rent and all. So now I'm just trying to maintain. I know I'm not going to get any better, but I'm just trying to not look any worse.
Well, so basically it's genetic for you. You just got lucky.
Yes we are chemicals.
Yeah, yes, we are a podcast about middle aged women and all the life issues that we encounter. As middle aged women, and of course one of those is dating in middle age and finding love again and what that feels like, because it's different than when you are younger and dating.
There's a lot of there's a lot of other.
Things to consider, you know, your children, your families, your lifestyle. You know, you're you're used to a certain lifestyle. So we're going to ask about all of those things. But first we just want to ask about the show about the Bachelorette a little bit, of course. So did you want to go on? And did somebody push you towards it? How did you get cast on that show?
I actually self applied, which is not normally certain actual seems to be the story more for women and then men all seem to be applied by their daughters. It seems to be like a thing.
Oh that's so interesting.
Yeah, that was definitely like the story I hear from almost all men, like they don't self apply generally, their daughters do it, or some woman friend of theirs does it for them. But for me and for a lot of women on my show, like when I was on Golden Bachelor, we applied ourselves. So I think maybe we are more conscious of like meeting somebody. Meeting somebody is harder, and you know, dating apps don't always work out, and you know, for some reason, maybe it's easier for men,
or maybe they just don't care as much. And so I felt like in general, the women applied themselves, which is what I did, but I did it after a little while. So I had been a widow for about two years, which was also a little on the soon side. But I kept thinking like I didn't want to go through the second half of my life alone, and I felt like I was six together. I was fifty eight when I was widowed, and I kept thinking like I
could have a whole nother life. I could have a whole nother thirty years with somebody like I have with John. So I had thirty two years with John. So I kept thinking I could have a bunch of time, But it could take me some time to find somebody, because the pool is not very big, and especially if you want to stay like close to where you live, and I did because I have my kids and my grandkids live here and I didn't want to leave. So then
the pool was really small. So I was out to dinner one with a friend and we were sitting at a bar at a local restaurant eating dinner, and I was like, I don't know how I'm ever going to meet somebody, you know. I kept thinking somebody would introduce me to this great guy you know that they work with, or a friend of the families or whatever. That never happened. Everybody said, oh, you don't want any of the guys I know or you know, I just don't know anybody.
And then I thought, well, I'll just meet somebody organically. Like sitting at a bar at a restaurant as opposed to sitting at a table makes you more open for people to talk to you. Well, certainly people talk to us. I was always there like with a girlfriend, but they were never single. So and then I looked around and I said, look, everybody at this restaurant is a couple.
And even if I saw, like, let's say, across the bar, I saw a man, I thought he was handsome, if he was my age, I would assume he was married. So I would never like send a drink over or a wave, or you know, make any any you know, advance, because I would have assumed that he was already married, which is very different from the younger generation. They go everywhere and they think everybody here are single, and it's
very different for when you're older. So then I tried dating app on one and it was like a job.
All.
I felt like I had spent all the time on my phone, you know, being witty and being flirty, and at the time I would meet the guy and he wasn't anything that he said he was. They lied about their ages, they didn't look like their pictures, so that wasn't like a really positive experience. So I came home after being out that night with a friend and I turned on the TV and they were doing a casting
call for this Golden Bachelor. So I filled out the form because I thought it was like the universe talking to me.
Yeah, well, I will tell you I was my sister. So I'm fifty six when my sister is fifty five. But a few years ago, maybe even like five years ago, but I remember she wrote an open letter to The Bachelor of producers and whenever she found their corporate she was so angry that there was not she couldn't find herself represented on the Bachelor, and she's like, when are
you going to do a show for women? And it hies I think there's a lot to do with what you talked about on the show, which is that feeling when you get older as a woman that you're invisible, and she felt really invisible, and you know, so they never even responded to her. But you know, she wrote this sort of a I don't know how angry it was, but it was she was angry, like I don't want to only watch twenty three year olds, you know, book for love, Let's watch women are age.
So what did your.
Family think of it when you were when new or a cast? Were they happy about it?
Upset?
You know, not everybody likes to be thrust into the spotlight.
Very true, and like that was my choice, not theirs, to be in the spotlight, and they didn't particularly want to be the spotlight, to be honest, and they also kind of like me. So when I was cast on the Golden Bachelor, like it was the first ever of a golden series and you didn't really know what it was going to look like, like are we going to look undignified or were going to look foolish? What are they going to make us do or what are they going to ask us to do? Is it going to
be the same stuff? That they asked the younger people to do or is it going to be something different? Are they going to you know, tailor it to us. So I was a little nervous going on the show. I actually had thoughts of not doing it. It took me, I came down to about the last day that they needed to know to say that I was going to do it, because I was nervous. And then the first few days I was there, I kind of hung in the background. I didn't really jump to the front. I
didn't be like, look at me, look at me. I hung way back because I still was kind of feeling it out. I didn't know. I didn't know the produces hardly at all, other than the interaction I had, you know, prior to going to the show. You have a little interaction with them, but not a lot. So I didn't really know. I wasn't confident that their intentions were completely good. They were making a TV show. I didn't know if they were really wanting us to find love or they
just wanted to, you know, show old people dating. So it took me a little while to trust them. And when I did, I mean it certainly was. I was completely wrong about that. They were very, very very Their intentions were very good. Obviously I wouldn't have gone on the Golden Bacherette, but you know, to take a little while. And same for my kids. You know, they weren't there,
they didn't meet everybody. So when it finally came to it actually airing on TV, they all kind of stood back a little bit and hoping, I didn't, you know, make myself look foolish.
Yeah, and I'm curious if did you want to be I mean Jackie and I I I went on to Jersey Housewives. I was, you know, fifty three. Jackie was way younger than that, but also forty one. Yeah, forty one, but at three, you know, it what an adventure and as I know it has been for you as well. But did you want to be on TV? Was it? Are you somebody that had always Oh? Well, I mean I don't want to speak for Jackie, but for me, I had kind of dreams of always being one. Yeah.
I kind of wanted to see how it felt to be famous.
Yeah, yeah, not really so I was up till being on the show. I was kind of a shy person. I was a computer science major in college. I wrote code for a living, so I wasn't like an out there. I had a huge phobia of being on stage, which you saw on The Golden Bachelor when I had to do the talent show, I was terrified getting up there. So and it took me a little while to come into like like where I am today with this whole thing,
which I'm very comfortable with it. But I wasn't a person seeking like fame and wasn't wasn't dying to be on TV. I just didn't see another way of doing this. So like if if I was stalled out on a dating app and meeting somebody organically, and I still wanted to meet somebody, like I had to do something different, and that just is what popped in on my TV that night. So I did it. But it was uncomfortable writing over in the limo the first night getting out,
you know at a Golden Bachelor, I was terrified. I almost like quit while I was on When I was on a limo, Wow, and I was the last person out of the limo. So of the twenty two people, I was number twenty two. So I had this entire day and evening of this danks building up the whole day. I didn't get out of a lim until like eleven o'clock at night. I was by the time I got out of there, I could hardly speak. So I was definitely not unnatural and it was definitely not dying to be able to.
D And you knew nothing about him, there was no nobody had given you any information at all.
She did. So he got introduced on I think Good Morning America like a mole. Yeah, so he had been introduced, so we all knew a little, but he knew nothing about us. He'd never you know, names don't get released so much later till actually we finish all the taping is when they finally, you know, to say who we all are. But nope, Yeah, so I didn't know who he was and a little bit about.
Him, Joan, do you feel like in a comparison of the two shows, so first you were part of a group of twenty two women on the batch the Golden Bachelor, and then you were the Golden Bachelorette with a group of around the same number of men, do you feel like aging men and aging women were treated differently like the women that were in the first round the twenty two women, do you feel like there was a sense of well, the men are sexy, the women are just aging.
I know you weren't treated like that on the show, but in social media, do you do you get what I'm asking?
I definitely do. And now that you've mentioned it, like I've had that feeling and you verbalized it really well, because you do, like you know, they want to show the women as like they're active, and they are, you know, they're vibrant still. But our season, so the twenty two women skewed much older than the men from my Golden Bacherette season. So the Golden Bachelor, he was seventy when he you know, when our showed air, I was the youngest person on there. I was sixty, and there were
other sixty year olds. But then there were also people in well into their seventies, So the oldest person was seventy five. Sundra was seventy five. So they skewed a lot older and we acted a little older, or they didn't expect us to be as you know, active or as vibrant the men, I felt like they depicted as like In fact, they didn't even talk about most of the women's professions very much, or didn't talk about like their careers or you know, even talk about how we
raised our families. Partially because it was a much shorter season. There was only four weeks of the Golden Boucher and my season was seven half weeks, so you got a lot more opportunity to meet them men. But I did feel like the men they wanted to show them as being really fun, like as having sense of humor and like walking around the mansion and.
By the way, and yeah, I mean I think happened. I don't really think about it then, but that was part of what was besides, of course, the fact that it was you and that was, you know, amazing in and of itself. But the men were so adorable and they were so connected and you're right, even though I felt like they were more connecting I'm the Bachelor and the Golden Bachelor, but it definitely was different, and I didn't like, it's funny just to hear you say that
out loud. I didn't really think it through, but that's interesting.
But they had more time to you know, introduce the man and get you allow you to get to know them more, which I think helped immensely. People like really connected with the men and they really felt like their stories because they got to know them a little better. That wasn't true with the women. And the women we've all talked about this. We have a big group chat.
There's all twenty two of us are on a group chat, and once in a while, yeah, and everyone we have an opportunity to see, you know, a chunk of each other out of time and we have that conversation. We said, you know that it was a little different because we there was just so limited time. So there was only so much time. And also the episodes weren't only an hour long. The first like four episodes of The Golden Vetch Threat were an hour and a half or two.
Hours, and that was a half? Was it that on a technicality?
Why did it happen like that?
I think it's because they weren't really sure that the show was going to be successful, so they weren't investing as much in it. Like they didn't travel as much. They didn't they didn't do a lot. They it just wasn't as long.
Yeah, you left early from the first season or a family emergency. Did you let the producers know that you wanted to come back in some capacity or how did they know that you were open to it.
So when I was leaving, it was proposed to me. They said, you know a lot of times in these situations, I guess this has happened before. You know, people try to come back, or we liked for you to have to come back, you to be able to come back. So I said, I was open to it. I just had to see how things kind of went and how home and so I was in contact with them a lot between the time that I left and the time when it would have been like logical for me to come back,
which was I left on a Thursday. Maybe I could get things better by that next Monday, which I wasn't able to. But then there was another chunk of time. So at that point, since it was such a quick season, they were already starting to go on hometowns. So as Gary was on hometowns, I was still in contact with the producers to see if maybe I could come back after that. At that point, he had connected with somebody.
Obviously it was with a tree seth, but he had connected and maybe more, but he connected with somebody, and we kind of collectively decided that it wouldn't be good for me to come back at this point.
Did you have that feeling when you left, Like, I don't know, I only know what I saw, but what you were attached to Gary in that way? Did you have that sort of heartbreaking feeling or because I look at you now with chalk and I can't imagine if it had been you and Gart you just seemed I see it, you know, And I don't know if I even saw it then it was But how how hard was that to separate forget from the show, but from him from.
Him personally, So it kind of was like a revelation moment. Up until that point, it had been about at this point, about two and a half years since John had passed away, and I had never had any strong feelings about another man. I'd gone on many dates, none of them great, and he never had a feeling. I never had the idea that, Okay, I actually see myself moving on. I was just kind
of going through the motions with those other dates. So when I had that date with Geary that night, first of all, like it felt very special because I won this talent competition, which was crazy, and it was just because I think I wrote this heartfelt poem and then
I got up there. I had the courageing up there and actually say it, and I think he just you know, took pity on me a little bit, but I felt that very flattered that yeah, and I felt very flattered that we picked me, So that kind of already made the date like a little more special. And then we really had great conversations because he was really good at that. He understood that, you know, the time that he gets to spend with each person is really important, and you
have to have kind of important conversations. You can't just talk about you know, you know what your dog's name, or we're like, you know, what do you like to eat for dinner or whatever. You kind of move on, like to family, you know, to your family, and to like your dreams and what you look your future is
going to look like and things like that. So we had these important conversations, and for the first time I saw myself like in as a couple, and even if it wasn't with him, I started realizing that I was going to be able to do that, like my heart was going to be able to get there, because up until then, my head was the only part that was there. I knew I wanted it, but my heart hadn't followed yet. And at that point my heart followed, and I don't
know if it was with him at the time. You know, it was like it just felt good, And when I said goodbye the next morning, it was painful. It really was. I felt like we had had a connection. You know, at this point, it's like a really good friendship. We are a really good friend still, you say in much Yeah, yeah, we stay in touch. Yeah.
I can't help but think that he wanted you, he wanted to give it a try after him and Teresa broke up. I'm guessing I'm not going to comment. If I were him, I would have wanted to give it a try. Yeah, okay, that's fine.
So I know a lot of people who are getting divorced.
I feel like, at my age, I'm almost fifty, a lot of marriages are dropping like flies around me and I and some of the people in the divorce mindset like you're looking for a clean slate. It's definitely hard, but like you're ready to try again and ready to have love again. I imagine it might be a little bit different when you lose someone that you're still in love with,
so dating after becoming a widow might feel different. Did you have any kind of guilt or any kind of was it hard to allow yourself to be in love again?
Yeah, So, like, great question, because I didn't realize I had that guilt until I started having feelings for Chalk, So I thought like every thing was good. My heart and my head had now finally figured out that they wanted the same thing, and that I was moving forward and I'm here now, I'm the Golden Bachelorette. I'm totally committed.
You know.
I went on the show like feeling like I was really really ready. And first, you know, a couple of weeks all good, you know, cruising along, and then I started feeling this terrible guilt, and I was like how And I felt like I was being not genuine to the man. I thought that I was now not being honest to them because suddenly I felt like I wasn't ready, like I wasn't ready for a relationship because I realized I was still and would always be in love with John,
and I didn't know how to reconcile that. So I almost quit.
So I had a conversation, really, I know you were you almost quit?
How far were you into it when you.
Felt like that week three?
And they would must have been freak. Do you tell the producers they must have freaked out?
I did not.
I talked to the psychiatry and quit our four times in the first season. Exactly, you go, girl, I talked to the psychiatrist.
So I first of all, I was really tired. So we'd been filming for about three weeks, and I had gone on a bunch of dates, and you know, it's all really emotional, and you also are getting very tired. You know, you're not sleeping in the regular place or dating a lot of minute. It's a lot of work. And I was just getting really really tired at this point, like it all kind of hit one day, and so
I asked to speak to the psychiatrists. There's two of them that's always available on set with the contestants, and then they are also available to the you know, the main So they came into my room and I was like, I don't know if I can keep doing this. I still a lot of John, like like how do you do this? And they go, well, why do you think you have to not be in love with John? And I go, because, how do you, like, these are men, they expect me to fall in love with them. You
know one of them does. And they said, well you can still do that. They said, picture it like this, picture that John is a balloon in this hand and this other person is a balloon in this hand, and you don't have to let go of this one to hold onto this one, that there was room for both of them in your heart. And it was like the free pass I needed, Like that's all I needed to say to me. I was like, oh, so I don't have to be another job because I don't think I
can ever not be in love with them. And they said, no, you're fine, that that doesn't have to happen, and it tried to would be weird if it did.
I love that you have discussions with John when he was sick.
Yeah, well I didn't want to because I was in denial, the total denial that he was going to die. In fact, I thought he was the one person that survives pancreatic cancer and I was just being naive and I just wasn't watching what was happening around me. He had gone from being about two hundred and twenty pounds to one hundred and twenty pounds and he was just wasting away before my eyes. And he knew he was dying, but I just wasn't going to accept it. I was going
to talk about it. I was taking him to appointments and we were tied to empty Anderson to get him cared down, you know, in Texas, and we were doing everything we do to help him, you know, survive this. But one day he was really sick and he was laying on the sofa and he was sleeping on and off all day and he called me over and he's like, sit down next to me, pats right next to him, and he takes my hand and he said, you were the best wife ever and we had a great life together.
And I don't want you to be alone. I want you to find somebody when I'm gone. And I said, I am not having this conversation with you. I said, you are not going anywhere. And I was bad that he was saying that to me, and I was like,
I was just ignoring it. But I and I'd have forgot about that conversation for a little while, and it came back to me one day when I was so really really in the morning, you know, stage, and I remember him saying that, and I was like, what a gift that was that I didn't know he was given me such a gift, because I'm not sure if I could have done this whole thing if he hadn't given
me that gift. But he did, and I really really really like leaned on that a lot as I was moving through this whole thing, you know, as I was on the show and falling in love.
So that's really yeah, I'm like crying.
Think if it was you, if it was God forbid you. I mean, you think about the person that you think about them alone, and it's the hard you don't want them alone.
I want that No, especially from the marriage after you and Chock fell in love and got engaged.
How did you hide that relationship? Did they give you like pentometers for what you were allowed to do?
Yeah, they pretty much say you cannot tell anybody, you know, because we want and we didn't want to tell anybody. We want, like we want everybody to watch the show obviously, so it leaks out, you know, that kind of spoils the ending. So we certainly were really careful about who we told to. Obviously, our families knew, and I had
a couple of close friends. But after that, you don't tell anybody but Batcher's really really good about making sure you have time to you know, spend time together because you know you still you've been you know, living this kind of you know, life in a bubble when you're filming, and so it's kind of a false reality. So and even though you know until you actually get announced in at the finale, you're still living in a little bit of fostering reality. They give you time away from cameras.
So we got they call them happy couple of visits, and we got five of them, and so.
They my husband loves happy couple visits, so that's what you call them.
Got it. So they would they close to La and they put you up in like an airbnb for four or five days at a time. You can't lead. You go into disguise. You find a different airports and they just put you up in a house and you and you get to know each other. So they bring you groceries, you can rent movies. I had no idea. It's so fun. It's so vacation like every other week. It's so fun. And we had like a pool, we had a tennis ware one of the places we played tennis, We did puzzles, we had It was.
Weird to transition from having so much chaos to just you or I would have been nervous, just like, now, what is this going to look like? Right?
Is it going to trans the first happy couple visit I was super nervous about. So we hadn't So the first one didn't happen until September, and we had gotten engaged in early August and we had a whole month of just kind of talking on the phone. So that first day he got to did I get to the house. Oh, I got to the house first, and he came about a couple hours later, and I was so nervous.
I'm like, oh my god, and you say it, yeah, I was so gary it was.
So I had a bottle of wine open already, and he pulls up stampole in the driveway in his car. And all these places have gates, so you like, when you get out, nobody can see who's getting out whatever, So they closed the gate and then he gets out of the car and I meet him at the door and I have a glass of wine for him. I have my glass of wine, and it's like early evening and we immediately were back to where we were before.
So that mum, it was like nothing. It was like we were right back and we had a great dinner and we talked. We left and we started watching our Netflix series and like everything was perfect.
And it must have felt so good to be able to finally tell the world and get back out there and be.
Open about and everything.
It was so good.
I know that on our show social media can sometimes be really really tough on.
You, so always be I want to know how it's.
Been, not only for you in terms of being an aging woman, Like we both get a lot of comments about our looks as aging women, but I want to know about that part, but also protecting Chalk from you know, you chose him out of the twenty two I assume meant and and you know you really can't protect him, this person that you love now from what comes what comes at him because you chose him. And I know that's really hard. I've dealt with that on our show as well. So how has the social media been for you?
How do you handle it?
So social media? The day I got announced was at these things called the Upfronts in New York City, and sitting next to me was Lisa vander Pump and she says, I have a piece of advice for you. She said, do not listen to social media. She said, it will destroy you. She said. It took me years to take my own advice. She use and I'm so much happier now.
Do you know how she was? By the way, did you watch Housewives? Yeah?
Exactly. Oh my gosh, yeah, I love listening. I love she's still cool. I want to be here when I grow Yeah, so that was like great advice excefre I didn't really listen to it because I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, you're like really popular, you have a lot of people that know you. I'm not going to be that person. But sure enough, like the minute I came off the show, as the show aired, So when you're first the kind of cast, like a lot of people don't have opinions
about it. I didn't get a lot of a lot of responses to things, but eventually once the show started airing, that's when all the mean people kind of came out. So if I had one hundred comments on a post or something, ninety five would be really nice. Five would be awful. And the awful ones are so much meaner than the nice ones that those.
Are, and they're the ones you're a member to remember.
That word for a word, and like why you know, and saying things like you treated the men so poorly and you didn't give them a chance to talk, and you know how ugly I am and why do you use much chore? And you can't move your lip and all this like mean stuff. So and you your hair etenngines are terrible and like they attack you like the way you look, they tech you, the way you act,
they look. They never really brought my family into it, So if they brought my family into it, I would have been like mama bear and I would have like, I don't know what I would have done. But they
were really nice. Chalk didn't get attacked until about mid season, when he started looking a bit like a villain, although nobody really on my season looked like a villain, but he was becoming, you know, like we had a kind of a thing by mid season, and we were spending a lot more time with each other, and I think some of the men were like, hey, give us a chance. So he kind of looked like maybe he was being
a little possessive. That's a lot of that has to do with editing also, as you probably know, so he kind of started getting an attack then, and I felt bad about that because although he signed up to the show just like I did, so unlike your families, because you were in the Housewives, they didn't sign up for it,
and so you probably felt a little more protective. I knew that he knew what he was getting into and that we all signed up for this, and I knew in the end, as a season progresses, he is going to be you end up looking like a really good guy, like the guy he really is. But there were just some you know, some editing and that happened that made him look not you know, maybe gave him a bad edit at points best person.
I'm sorry, I mean to interrupt. You good to being younger and having to handle that like I think.
Yeah, you know, just like just like you.
I at the beginning and then I only did two seasons of Jersey Housewives, but the second season I certainly got a lot more the negative comments than I did the first season. But again, I started I was fifty three. I'm fifty six now, and I think that if I had been younger, like most women are when they start out on the Housewives, I think I would have had
a much harder time. You'd never want to hear nasty things about yourself, but at a certain age, and I think that's why I love the Golden bats and the Golden baths er at so much. You are. One great thing about aging is you know who you are, and you've been through stuff. You've been through real stuff, and in my mind, you have even more to offer the
world in terms of being on television. I'm a little you know, I'm a little biased in this area, but I think that people have have more almost sometimes to offer. But you know, dealing with it when you're twenty something or even early thirties and it's I can't even imagine. You have to have a very strong sense of self to be able to handle all of that.
Totally agree with you.
Did any of the social comments make you feel like, well, maybe I should do this, or maybe I should do this to fix you know what they were talking about. I think you're stunning, imperfect. But you know, I got off my show and I was like, oh God, I need a nose job and a facelift and hair translants and you know, yeah.
All those things. I think all of those I like, I stand in my my mirror and I go like this and the gool I could look a lot better. And you know, I'm the same. And like you said, for a young person, like how destroying that would be, Like I like, I can accept it, like my aging Okay, so this is what I'm going to like, I'm going to, you know, fight this as hard as I can, but eventually, you know it's going to end. When you're young and you're feeling like that, you don't you know, I can
do this gracefully. I feel like when you're young, you don't. You don't give yourself that kind of break. You're like, oh my god, this looks like I got to do something a lot of yours. I got a live bit the space or whatever with this body I can't imagine, Which is why I feel like social media is so damaging to think about a thirteen or fourteen year old. I know, and they're not on TV. They're just going
to school every day and they're getting an attacked. So like when we put ourselves on TV, we know what we're signing up for, and we can choose to look at the stuff or not choose look at the stuff, and you know, we could just go off the show. These kids are just out there living. They're just going to school every day and they're just trying to make friends and they're trying to figure out who they are in
the world. And they are not like prepared for it like we are, and they don't they're signing up for this. It's just being the rest of them.
Did you watch The Bachelor and The Bachelor at the you did? You did?
Yeah? And I do see that that mean girl behavior is like so disappointing. And I feel like so I feel like many years ago when The Bachelor started, that wasn't part of it. People were nice to each other, and it gradually over the years became more of a problem. And it came to the problem with the first with the girls and then with the guys, and that happened over several seasons, and I think the housewife set, yeah, kind of housewife And I feel like it needs a reset,
and I don't know how to make that happen. I was hoping that maybe Golden give it a little reset, people would start looking at it so it can look like this, but it never hasn't gotten one. It just it almost escalates every year or every scene.
That's why everyone loved Golden Bachelor and bats Rex. It was not like that. I mean there were some little petty funny things on the Bachelor and then the Bachelorette. I just saw these men. It was, it was, and it was it was more fun to watch, at least that's how I feel about it than than watching you know, the nastiness.
So now you're engaged, you're in love with chop and then comes in like.
Public scrutiny of your relationship. Has that affected you, guys?
Yeah, I look at like this. I look at the kind of publications every day to see like what's out. And it's funny it changes from day to day. Like I'll get screen rant and like one day it'll say, oh, they're solid and they're good, they're gonna get married, and the next day the stay they're on the road to separating and they're not together anymore. And whatever. By the way, I'm here in Maryland. Chuck is right in the other room.
He's working, and it is working. It's fine. But like they just take little hints from stupid things, you know, Like we were together on my birthday. Well we've seen each other the week before, we've seen each other the week after. Just he needed to work. I thinks I needed to do. You know, I'm sixty two, Like my birthday isn't like a year old birthdays. You know you're gonna be together that day. So you know, they took that and ran with it. So, you know, the public
scrutiny is ridiculous and it's it's not true. And we do feel a little bit of an obligation to post now together or whenever we're together, just to validate that we are still together. But I know it's you know, people invested in this journey and so to leave them at the curb and say we're not going to you know, show you how we're doing, is not the right thing to do. But for you, for like the you know, the publications, to assume that we're not good because we're
not posting every other day is ridiculous. We're just not together every other day. We're together like every other week or every three weeks, and we're but we're just because we're not posting doesn't mean we're not together.
Love right, No, I love it.
I love that you guys seem very good at not letting it affect your relationship and what you know is real.
Yeah, what are you yourself doing now with all of this? I mean everyone always asks Jackie and I and not just us, but anybody that's been on reality TV, like, now you have this platform, where do you see this going from here? And I don't mean in terms of your relationship, I mean just in terms of do you you know, has this opened up doors for you? Do you want it to open doors for you? Do you want this to translate into other potentially career opportunities?
Yeah? I I never expected this, so I hadn't put any thought into any of this until after the kind of the season ended and I thought, well, you know there. You know, we always asked to do a lot of interviews, and people want to hear this story and it's indifferent
than a younger dating story. And that was kind of part of my goal when I went on the show, was to not like I knew it was about me finding love, but I felt like there were all these other people that were my age and maybe a little younger and a little older, but in the same weird boat of finding themselves being single at this you know, kind of second half of their life, and I wanted to represent that whole group, not it just be about me, but it'd be about all these people and get people
hope and like show that it's possible and it could be fun, it could be dignified, and you shouldn't feel guilty and all those things, all those feelies that I was feeling like, I just like put them right out so I could, you know, actually maybe like be an example to people that are thinking about doing it. So I'd love to continue that, like, you know, whatever that looks like, if it's a podcast or if it's TV, or if it's a book, or if it's none of those things, it is what it is. I got, honestly
exactly what I wanted from this. I found my fiance. I found the second level of my life. So if nothing comes of it, I got exactly why I went on the show. But if something, you know, more comes of it, I you know, I would welcome the opportunity.
Yeah, I love it. Do you think you guys have got married? I know everyone asked that, but yeah, yeah, you.
Know, when I went on the show, I was not actually looking necessary to get married. I don't feel like I don't have the biological clock and I having kids. You know, we're not e merging. We're just I didn't see a need to get married, and I actually didn't even see a need to get engaged. I said when I went on the show, I wanted to find a person that I wanted to explore being together with, but not necessarily needing to get engaged, and maybe that would
have been too quick. I figured out as I was going through this that Chuck and I matched up in like pretty amazing ways, and I felt like I really knew him, So getting engaged didn't feel weird, even though it was really really quick, And getting married now doesn't feel weird either, Like I you know, I was married for thirty two years and I loved it, and so like, why would I not want to get married, Like, what's the point of not getting married?
It's right show approached you about doing it on TV.
They have not yet.
No, No, I think that well. And I also think that we all kind of maybe learned a lesson from Gary and Teresa that maybe that was too quick and they probably don't want to make that mistake again. And I've certainly not in any rush to get married. I am actually really happy right now, just not have anything to do. You know, he and I were doing some press stop to go and Drew Barrymore on Thursday. We need to do things. Yeah, so we get to do really fun things. We're gonna go to a gulf turned
mountain in La I mean out in Carmel. iHeart Radio is treating us, and so we get to do some really really fun things. Like planning a wedding right now seems like it would be like a lot of work. So I'm just gonna we're just have fun right now, and I will plan a wedding and we will get married and it will be for the world to see if they want to see it, or it'll just be our private little thing with their families. However it works out, we will get married. But I'm just sent sure man.
And are you guys still getting a place together in New York?
We were there last week and extra going tomorrow again. We keep looking. The inventory is pretty low and it'll apparently loosen up some in the spring. So okay, So.
We're you're settled in.
Me and Jen are only like fifteen minutes away. We're right over the border in Jersey, so we'll come in. We'll sit at a bar with you and have dinner. Yeah.
I would love sec very friends.
I have your friends. Thank you, Okay, friends, this is really really fun.
Anything else you would want people to know about you or your experience or chalk.
So I probably should like finish up with the family. Ended up actually loving this for me and actually for them, and they love Chalk. And my grandkids. My granddaughter who's only fourteen months old, says, where's Chalk, word Chalk wherever? She's like, We're so cute. I know. And last time Chalk was leaving my grandson and said, I don't want that guy to go. So everybody loves chalk. And the
families are all good. His kids are amazing. They came and spent Thanksgiving here and I got to spend New Year's Eve with his son in Kansas, so all is good. All is good to families.
I think that what I love about this the most is that you really did do what Jackie and I talk about all the time, which is, you know, bring not only visibility to women and men of a certain age, so right, so that feeling of being invisible, to really sort of challenge that, but also to show that after a certain age you're not done. You are and not just not done with life, You're not done with feeling sexy or wanting to connect or feel good about yourself,
like you know, the idea that sort of. I think there's so much agism in our world and in our country, and I absolutely love that the folks at the Bachelor, you know, knew that this was important. I mean, I think there are lots of areas that they could even expand it into whatever. I won't go off on a tangent, but I think that it's such a great thing that I think women and men of all ages want to watch you. I want to watch these guys. I want
to watch these gals. You know. It's like and see and still get that feeling of excitement watching two people of a certain age connect in that way. It's such a breakthrough and.
It's not gross, so I know, so like people would be like.
Oh, it's not gross, exactly.
Gross, Like it doesn't gross if you kiss somebody. Yeah, and it's and it's not a key seeing like the guys in mina bathing suits, so you know, it doesn't have to be a gross thing like the stereotypes. It's time they're broken. We're not. We are way different.
Amen's sister, and I feel like it's chipping. I feel like we're chipping away at that.
You know, I agree with you, Yeah, but I'd.
Like to see the next one be more inclusive in terms of sizes. That always kind of bugged me with The Bachelor, not necessarily the Golden Bachelor, but like I was always like, you know, there there were cookie cutter. It looked very cookie cutter to me in terms of body size.
Always kind of because anyway said that to me. Someone said that to me, I'm golden. They said, why is everybody size two and wealthy? And I'm like, you have no I look back at her. I usually don't answer those, I just let go, and I would at this girl. I said, you have no idea what you're talking about. Look at the body types on on Golden Baucher. Not everybody was spice too. No, not everybody did bo talks. Not everybody was wealthy. I said, you have no idea
the backgrounds of these women. I mean, we had teachers there, we had women who didn't work, we'd stayed at home moms, We had a fitness instructor, wealthy women. We were wealthy sized to women carried burken bags. It's not true.
Yeah. More I mean with the Bachelor, not the Golden one that just all these everybody is just has this rock and body and they're always in bikinis and that's fine, and I love it too, and I love watching and you know, it's let's say it's aspirational. But I would love to see I don't know, some more different bodily agreed than Yeah.
I totally agree. They'd have one on GEN season, a guy on Gen season that everybody fell in love with. He was like maybe a little heavier, he was just he was absolutely adorable and he was real popular. But she let him go kind of early in the journey, which I felt bad because he was like a fan favorite.
Right right, Yeah, just and more women like that. But anyway, sorry, I'm getting off on a little bit.
Yes, yes, we could talk all day about what they should do.
Yeah, exactly.
Joan, thank you so much for coming. We love talking to.
You and this was really inspirational and and wishing you and talk you know, just a lifetime of happiness together.
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me, and I look forward to our dinner in New York City.
The six of us, maybe just the three of us, I don't know. We'll decide we'll figure it out.
The more than Marrier. Thank you so much talking to you.
Be welcome, amazing. I'm in love with her. That was amazing.
You know, I do feel like she is so beautiful, and I don't know, there's something that always I just I want them. I'm hoping that they'll do not even a Golden Bachelor brea because I think they are inclusive, but like a Bachelor where not everyone is so gorgeous.
Well, I mean, you can still be gorgeous and look different, but I don't I hear what you're saying.
But it wasn't like that for the Golden Bachelor or Bachelor. They had people of all different shapes and sizes, which I love right More like on the.
Batch, which she is I love. I love what she said.
About the balloon, like holding the balloon in each hand. That makes so much sense. And you know that I imagine it must be so hard. I lost two family members to pancreatic cancer. One was my mother's mother, and like, it's such a painful, with painful journey. I mean, it doesn't feel quick when you're going through it, but it's you just watch someone go so quickly, and I can't
imagine how hard that would be. So I'm so I'm so happy that she feels like she has permission from from her husband, from the universe to try again and to be in love again, you know, cause you get one more complicated like when you have young kids, right, Like I picture God forbid, but well there are people there and they know they're dying, and then you have to picture your partner with someone else. And then you picture your kids with another parent who's getting very morbid
very quickly. But it's all very very complicated.
Life, and it's part of getting older.
But you'd want your kids also to have another loving parent, right, You'd want.
Your kids also want their parents to be happy.
You know.
It's not something you realize when you are a child. But now that I'm older, I mean my parents they're still married. They haven't lived together in twenty five years. But when I was a kid, they fought all the time, and as much as I never wanted them to separate, I wished that they were happier.
You know, And they're happy now.
They're actually I think happily more happily married now than they were when I was younger.
Maybe that's the answer. He's just living separately exactly.
You haven't get the hell out, Okay, right, so this was fabulous. I missed your face. I haven't seen you in a little bit. I know, plan something when we get off of here, but this was great. She was a perfect guest and I loved it me too. Thanks you, guys, Thank you so much for listening.
Thanks guys, see you next time.
Bye.