The Golden Bachelor’s Susan Noles had her eye on Kelsey Anderson’s dad, Mark Anderson.
“When we met him at your finale, of course, Susan elbowed her way in to see if she could maybe date the guy,” Kathy Swarts said on the Wednesday, June 26, episode of the “Bachelor Happy Hour” podcast.
Susan, 67, interjected, “We were emailing long before that.” As Kathy, 71, gushed that Mark is a “super nice guy,” Susan added, “Great guy.”
After Kathy joked that she’s going to have to pursue Mark after all of the praise, Susan added, “He’s 57, Kathy.” Kathy replied, “So what? I can go younger.” (Kathy and Susan both vied for the affections of Gerry Turner during The Golden Bachelor season 1 in 2023, but he ultimately proposed and wed Theresa Nist. They have since divorced.)
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When asked how she would feel if Mark had a “similar dating experience” to her, Kelsey, 26, said she would “fully support it.”
“I want my dad to get out there. I want my dad to date,” Kelsey said. “I think that my mom really would want him to. My mom before she passed always said like, ‘I want you to find somebody else. I want you to find another love.’ Before she even was sick she would always say this. She just knew that she was going to pass before him.”
Kelsey noted that she and her other siblings would support their dad because they “want him to be happy and find a partner to travel and do things with.”
“I feel like my dad gave all of us so much love growing up and he still does. I just feel like my dad deserves love as well,” she continued. “I think that loving your family is different than loving a partner. And I think that he needs that support of a partner, someone that’s not his kid, not his brother, his sister-in-law. Like his best friend. I think my dad is deserving of that.”
While Kelsey has been supportive of her dad getting back out there, she said it took some of her siblings “a little bit longer to feel that way.”
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“My dad hasn’t really dated. He kind of dated one or two ladies but it was very kind of … I don’t feel like he fully felt like he could date them because he always felt guilty about it,” she explained. “Because he feels like nobody is going to replace our mom and it’s like, we know that nobody is going to replace our mom but it’s going to be a different love and it’s going to be something that you deserve.”
She continued, “We just want him to be happy and find a best friend like how he was with my mom as well.”
Kelsey’s mom, Denise Anderson, died in 2018 following a battle with breast cancer. While detailing the tragedy during Joey Graziadei’s season 28 of The Bachelor, Kelsey added that her dad has been in her corner — especially during her journey to find love on the ABC reality series.
“On the way to the airport, I was on the phone with Dad, and I was like, ‘What do you think Mom would think about all of this?’ He was like, ‘You’re your mother’s child. You’re so brave.’ He was like, ‘That’s something your mom would do.’ He just felt like I was exuding my mom’s energy, I guess,” she said during a one-on-one date with Joey, 29, in Spain, to which he replied: “With how you’re describing her energy, 100 percent.”
Joey ultimately popped the question to Kelsey during the season finale, which aired in March.
