“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 told Kelsey Anderson
Bachelor nation might have brought together an unexpected couple!
Golden Bachelor castmates Susan Noles and Kathy Swarts welcomed Bachelor season 28 winner Kelsey Anderson to their podcast, Bachelor Happy Hour, to discuss her life after the show. When the topic of conversation shifted to her dad, Mark, the ladies were quick to play matchmaker.
“When we met him at your finale; of course, Susan elbowed her way in to see if she could maybe date the guy,” Swarts told Kelsey.
“We were emailing before that,” Noles chimed in to reveal.
Swarts noted that Kelsey’s “dad is a super nice guy,” and Noles took it a step further, insisting he is “a great guy.” Swarts then started to find interest in Mark herself, but Noles caught her.
“He’s 57, Kathy,” Noles said and Swarts replied, “So what? I can go younger.”
Kelsey won Joey Graziadei’s heart on the most recent season of The Bachelor. The pair left show engaged and Graziadei moved in with her after the finale aired in March. When the co-hosts asked the reality star how she would feel if her father — who lost his wife and Kelsey’s mom from breast cancer in 2018 — found love in the same way she did, she was quick to say “yes.”
“I would fully support it,” she shared. “I want my dad to get out there. I want him to date — I think that my mom really would want him to. My mom, before she passed, always said, ‘I want you to find somebody else. I want you to find another love.’”
She added: “Even before she was sick she would say this.”
Noles related to Kelsey’s dad, saying that moving on on following her husband’s death has been difficult. For Noles, her kids were not very accepting of her dating again after losing their father.
“My sons were very eager but my daughter was much more reticent about me dating and about me finding somebody,” she revealed. “I wonder what you would say to people your age to sort of give your parents a break.”
Kelsey understood both sides, explaining it took her siblings “a bit longer” than her to want Mark to put himself back into the dating world after the death of her mom. At the same time, she said him finding someone else does not take away from his love for his late wife.
“I feel like my dad gave us so much love growing up and still does, and I think that my dad deserves love,” she explained. “Loving your family is so different from loving a partner, and I think that he needs that support of a partner, someone who is not his kid, not his brother or sister-in-law.”
Noles said she took comfort in hearing Kelsey say this, because she “deserves to be happy” in another relationship despite mourning her loss. Kelsey agreed, but also admitted her dad hasn’t dated much.
“He feels like, ‘No one’s gonna replace your mom,’ and we know that no one is gonna replace our mom, but it’s gonna be a different love,” she said about her father’s experience when it comes to dating.
