Joan Vassos is ready to do things her way as the inaugural Golden Bachelorette.
After it was announced that Joan, 61 — who appeared on the first season of The Golden Bachelor — would be the first-ever lead of the spinoff franchise, she acknowledged she’s going into the process without a clear idea of how the journey will end.
“If it ends up in engagement, I’m open to that,” Joan told CNN in an interview published on Tuesday, May 14. “I do believe this process works. I’ve seen it work for so many couples on The Bachelor, so I believe in the process. If it ends up in engagement, that’s great.”
However, Joan said if things end with her and a prospective partner getting to “know each other better in the outside world” before jumping into an engagement, “that’s perfect also.”
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“I probably won’t rush into a marriage right away — and not only because of what happened with Gerry and Theresa,” she explained. “I think it takes some time to really get to know somebody. Out in the wild, in the real world, you need to spend some time there.”
After Gerry Turner, 72, and Theresa Nist, 70, got engaged in the November 2023 finale of The Golden Bachelor, the duo tied the knot in a live wedding ceremony in January. The couple announced their split last month. On April 12, Us Weekly exclusively broke the news that Turner had filed for divorce, citing an “irretrievable breakdown” of the marriage.
When it came to the surprising breakup, Joan — who self-eliminated from The Golden Bachelor to be with her daughter, who had recently given birth — admitted she “did not see it coming.”
“I loved watching their journey. I saw them fall in love,” Joan said. “I believed just, like — they did that. They were like the perfect couple. I applaud that they jumped into this process with both feet and they were ready to find love and they knew what true love was.”
Joan also gave credit to the couple for recognizing that things were no longer working.
“They called it quits and it’s not the end of the world,” she noted, “and we have to let them live their journey and follow their hearts and it wasn’t right for them.”
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As for The Golden Bachelorette, the mother of four and grandmother of two is eager to show the world that women with her amount of life experience still have plenty to offer.
“There’s a lot of knowledge that we have inside of us because we’ve lived life,” Joan said. “In our culture, I feel like growing old is not a dignified thing. You’re just supposed to kind of fade in the back, take a backseat to the next generation. I’m hoping that we change that a little bit. We’re still fun and energetic and we know how to use our phones.”
The Golden Bachelorette premieres this fall on ABC.
