Joey Graziadei is pulling back the curtain on his relationship with fiancée Kelsey Anderson after The Bachelor.
“It was interesting. I wouldn’t say it was all sunshine and rainbows,” Graziadei, 30, said on the Thursday, May 29, episode of NFL alum Isaac Rochell’s “I’ll Ask” YouTube show. “It was also really fun, too, [and] learning so much. You’re like, ‘Wow, I still really need to get to know that person.’”
Graziadei met Anderson, 26, on season 28 of The Bachelor, which aired in early 2024. They got engaged in November 2023 but had to keep their relationship a secret until the show aired the following spring.
“We always say we dated in reverse,” Graziadei quipped. “We knew everything about each other on a deep level [and] we knew that we had similar life goals. We felt like there was something here that was worth striving toward, but I didn’t even know how she was as a roommate.”
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He added, “We didn’t even live [together]. Like, do they know what they’re doing in the kitchen? How do they clean up in the bathroom? So, we were figuring out so many small things about each other and still trying to put effort and time into that.”
After the show, Graziadei moved in with Anderson to her rented apartment in Louisiana.
“Kels came from New Orleans, where she was living with two other roommates and she had her own life and was working in construction project management,” Graziadei recalled. “She went straight back to work [and] was working full-time, and I’m sitting at home, like, passing the time, having to go around and do press in New York and L.A. There’s a lot of little things that people don’t realize that I have to promote this season [and] no one even knows who Kelsey Anderson is yet — even though this is the person that all I want to do is be spending time with.”
According to the former tennis pro, he felt guilty for “living this life of the Bachelor” while Anderson was still “waiting for her opportunity” in the spotlight.
“I just ignored everything and just really focused on what was most important to me, which was focusing on Kelsey,” he stressed.
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Anderson later joined Graziadei in Los Angeles when he moved for Dancing With the Stars season 33 last year.
“We were just new kids in love, just having fun and trying to figure out how we were going to start this life together,” he added. “It was exciting.”
The pair are hardly the first Bachelor couple to feel the same way. Season 12 Bachelorette JoJo Fletcher and now-husband Jordan Rodgers were candid with Us back in 2021 about the learning curve of life after the ABC show.
“There were so many reasons why we thought we should not be together,” Fletcher admitted. “I think, subconsciously for me, and for him, there was this pressure, not only from people that watch the show but, like, our family and our friends.”
Other recent Bachelor Nation couples, including Bachelorette season 20 couple Charity Lawson and fiancé Dotun Olubeko, have decided to take their time getting married.
“We’ve taken a pause on [wedding planning],” Lawson, 29, told Us in 2024. “For me, I got in this space where I just felt this constant pressure of, like, I need to check off something every month or every week. And it got to the point where I’m like, ‘I don’t wanna do that right now.’ I’m also still just easing into life and normalcy again. Obviously, we’re still getting married. We’re taking a moment, taking a beat.”
