“Golden Bachelorette”’s Joan Vassos Reveals Why She and Chock Chapple Really Called Off Engagement in First Post-Split Interview

Brianne TracyFri, November 13, 2026 at 10:29 PM UTC

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Joan VassosCredit: Charles Sykes/Bravo via Getty -

The former Golden Bachelorette star tells PEOPLE she and Chock Chapple realized they were not the right match after two years together

Vassos says their long-distance arrangement was not the reason for the breakup but that was difficult to juggle

She also reveals her dreams for her next chapter

When Joan Vassos got engaged to Chock Chapple on her season of The Golden Bachelorette in 2024, she had faith that she’d found her forever person.

“When Chock got down on one knee, I was like, ‘I think I can do this. I’m ready to make this leap of faith. I actually have enough faith in this relationship to think that it might really succeed, that we might really get married,’” Vassos tells PEOPLE over Zoom, recalling that she also told herself, “If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out.”

Over the next two years, Vassos and Chapple, both 63, did it all together: They introduced each other to their inner circles, they vacationed together and they even pushed through Chapple’s recent medical crisis together. (In August, Chapple revealed that he’d had his prostate removed after a cancer scare.)

“We did a lot,” Vassos says. “I had two sons get married, three grandbabies born. I mean, a lot happened in our two years of engagement. We did all the things. I mean, when you go through something medically, that really tests a relationship, and I felt like we did so much of this really well.”

Joan Vassos and Chock Chapple L.A. in 2024Credit: Jesse Grant/Getty

Ultimately, though, Vassos says she and Chapple “figured out that we weren’t each other’s person, and that’s okay.”

“I grew immensely in that time,” she says. “I figured out what I need from a relationship. I figured out that I can actually fall in love with somebody again. It wasn’t like any part of this relationship was ever miserable. It’s just we weren’t each other’s people. I’m grateful for the whole thing, even though the ending wasn’t what I wanted.”

Vassos admits that she was “so, so, so nervous” to reveal to fans on Nov. 9 that she and Chapple had ended their engagement.

“I’m a people pleaser, so I felt really, really, really guilty about disappointing people,” she says. “I do feel guilty that we broke up. I feel like I let a lot of people down. Right when we first got engaged and came off the show, I got so many messages from people saying, ‘You’ve given me hope that there’s a second chapter in my life. I’m going to get back on a dating site, I’m going to make an effort to meet somebody.’ That’s exactly what I wanted, and I hope that these people keep going in that right direction and that I didn’t shatter their hopes.”

“But, I mean, if it’s not right, it’s not fair for either one of us to stay in a relationship that we don’t think is going to last,” she adds. “I’m still hopeful, and I don’t feel like just because this relationship didn’t last that I don’t have a relationship in my future.”

Pressure is something Vassos knows well. When she first signed on to be the Golden Bachelorette, the franchise had been going through a bit of a rough patch with their couples: Golden Bachelor couple Gerry Turner and Theresa Nist had just announced their split after three months of marriage, and Jenn Tran’s season of The Bachelorette had ended with her fiancé, Devin Strader, dumping and ghosting her.

“It took all that hope away from people,” Vassos says. “My season was next, so I felt so much pressure to be successful. Luckily, I had this cast of amazing men, many of whom I still am in contact with. Then I felt the pressure that everybody likes this really happy ending that’s kind of wrapped up in a bow, and that is an engagement.”

After getting engaged to Chapple and leaving the show, Vassos says they “did so many things right.”

“You’ve got to imagine how hard it is to get to know somebody on camera — nobody is completely themselves on camera,” she says. “Then, you do these happy couple visits for the four months leading up to your finale. So while the show is airing, you get to spend time together in L.A. in these secret houses. Then, you live life out in the world. I still had a job and Chock did too, so your life is exploding a little bit, you have this new relationship that you need to concentrate on, and all of a sudden there are just not enough hours in the day.”

Joan Vassos with Chock Chapple on her season of ‘The Golden Bachelorette’ in 2024Credit: Disney/Gilles Mingasson

Making things even more complicated was the fact that Vassos and Chapple were long-distance. Vassos lives in Maryland with her family, while Chapple lives in Kansas.

“Our lives grew so much just because of the show, like, opportunities we would get,” she says. “We were juggling even more than what we had prior to [filming]. So we had a new relationship, jobs, and then all of this other great stuff that came from being on the show.”

Vassos makes clear, though, that the distance wasn’t what split them up, and in her next relationship, she doesn’t feel she needs to live in the same place as her partner.

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“I feel like I need to live some part of a year with my next partner,” she says. “If I found somebody who lives in Colorado and I live in Maryland, I feel like it’s important that you have a place where you meet that you own together, like Florida or New York City or Chicago. You need to have a place where that’s your place and twice a month you guys go there and spend a week or a couple weeks there, or you spend the whole winter in Florida or whatever.”

“I feel like you do need a meeting place because weirdly, when you go into somebody else’s environment, it’s their responsibility to make you acclimate to there,” she continues. “When you’re working full-time, it’s just hard. It was hard for me to bring Chock here and give him a world that he had in Kansas already. And it was hard for me to go to Kansas and him make me feel comfortable and give me something to do 24 hours a day when he was at work or whatever. You need to create your own life separate from your existing lives. So I want somebody who is willing to find the next fun place to live but still be okay with me living in Maryland, and I would still be okay with them living wherever they are.”

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Vassos also wants her next partner to be funny like her late husband John, who died from pancreatic cancer in 2021.

“John was super funny. And I don’t want to compare my next person to John, but I love somebody with a good sense of humor,” she says. “It just brings me joy. I’m kind of a serious person, so I love having somebody that takes me out of my own element and makes me laugh. I also love a good banter.”

Vassos might have some dreams for her next relationship, but she’s not ready to jump back into the dating pool quite yet.

“It sounds a little daunting to me right now,” she says. “I just feel like I need to ... I don’t want to say heal because I’m not broken. There’s nothing wrong with me. I just am not ready. It’s a little bit of a job. It’s not like when you’re young where you can go to a bar and everybody there is single. Dating is very different at my age, and it takes a lot more effort.”

While Vassos and Chapple’s relationship didn’t get the fairytale ending she envisioned, she is thankful for it opening her eyes to the possibility love after the loss of John.

“I figured out that I could love again, and that was a huge gift because I didn’t know what that looked like,” she says. “If you watch my season, you could see that I was like, ‘I don’t know if I can do this because I’m still in love with my late husband.’ I had these great conversations with the show psychiatrists that were like, ‘You’re looking at this all wrong. You don’t have to let go of one love to have another one.’ I had never done therapy or anything, and that was a huge gift.”

As for where she stands with Chapple now, Vassos says she wants “him to be happy.”

“I want him to find somebody if he wants somebody, and I’d like to find somebody. But if I don’t, I am grateful for that whole chapter and knowing that I can fall in love and still have fun,” she says. “I can envision a future now when I couldn’t before I was on the show. This chapter of being single is very different than the last one because I didn’t know if I could fall in love.”

In this new chapter, Vassos is also exploring new dreams. She’s currently writing a book that’s “a little bit memoir, a lot of cooking.” She says, “I really didn’t want to write a cookbook because I’m not a gourmet cook, but I did feel like there was some content there that revolved around the relationships of being in the kitchen and being together. So the basis of this book is about conversations in the kitchen and about things I learned in the kitchen and things I learned about family.”

And she’d certainly return to reality TV one day. She says she was turned down after interviewing for Dancing with the Stars, but a stint on The Traitors is still on her bucket list.

“I’m a huge Traitors fan, like, a freak fan. I love reality TV. I am not an actress. I can’t sing. I can’t dance,” she says, before adding with a laugh, “The only avenue to keep doing this really fun stuff is reality, I think, because I have no real talent.”

In the meantime, Vassos says fans can still expect updates on her life via social media, whether she has a “terrible date or a great date.”

“I like to keep that conversation going because I feel like it’s hard being this age and single,” she says. “Even though I don’t have Chock anymore, if this community is still invested in me, we can give each other information. I have no idea how to date. I did it on national TV! I don’t know how to do it again, so let’s just go out and have fun. We’re no different than the 30-year-old seeking somebody. We’re just older doing it and we have more wrinkles, but we also have more history and more stories.”

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