Plus where she’s at in her wedding-planning process with Chock Chapple.
Joan Vassos and Chock Chapple aren’t in a rush to walk down the aisle. While the couple—who met and got engaged in Season 1 of The Golden Bachelorette—hope to get married in the next year, their current focus is on dating in the real world.
“It’s been such a pleasure for Chock and I to be able to live like normal people,” Joan tells StyleCaster while promoting her partnership with Aspercreme. “To meet each other’s friends. To have dinner and watch a Netflix series. We just went on a vacation for the first time. We kind of worked backward. We got engaged, and then we started dating. We’ve also been really busy. We’ve gotten opportunities to be on a lot of shows and do appearances. So until that slows down, I don’t have enough time to plan a wedding. I just don’t want to put that pressure on myself yet to plan the wedding. I would say in the next year we’re going to do something, but I just haven’t started planning it.”
Joan and Chock also still live apart—her home is in Maryland, while Chock resides in Kansas—though Joan maintains that the distance hasn’t had a negative effect on their relationship. “He still has a business in Kansas that’s probably going to be going on for at least another year, maybe a little longer. He’s trying to get it to a point where it can run on its own or he can sell it, and it’s not there yet,” she says. “Right now, we’re doing a really good job of seeing each other, but not living together. We see each other about every 10 days for four or five days at a time. We have plans for the next two months to see each other. Living together doesn’t seem to be a big issue. I know everybody feels like when you live apart that puts a strain on the relationship, but that hasn’t been the case for us at all. We’ve seen each other a ton. The saying that absence makes the heart grow founder, it really does.”
Joan and Chock also have yet to lock down their anniversary date after celebrating multiple firsts on The Golden Bachelorette. “I think maybe it’s the day we got engaged, which was in the beginning of August,” she says. “I would think that was our first major commitment. I know the day we met was on the show. I guess people would might call that the first date or maybe Disneyland was really our first date. But I feel like the engagement was the day when we really started living our life together.”
As for Season 2 of The Golden Bachelor, Joan hasn’t heard anything about who the next lead will be after Season 1’s Gerry Turner. However, she theorizes that casting for the new Golden Bachelor is still going on because of how many contestants from her Golden Bachelorette season are now in relationships.
“A unique thing happened after our season. After my season, a lot of the guys have girlfriends,” she says. “I think this was totally due to the great relationships they formed with each other and being more confident to date. Mark does, Jonathan does, Charles does, Christopher does. A lot of the guys have paired off already, which takes them out of the running to be the Golden Bachelor. I would not be completely surprised if they went ahead and cast a completely different person.”
While Joan predicts that ABC will cast an unknown for the Season 2 Golden Bachelor, she hopes that the network will consider men from her season who didn’t get as much screen time. “There are a lot of guys who America didn’t get to know very well who would be amazing and are still single,” she says. “You don’t know that much about Dan or Greg or Keith. Maybe they weren’t matches for me, but they’re amazing guys. I would love if they chose somebody from this season. I’m just not positive they’re going to because I’m watching Grant’s season, and I keep seeing the casting call that says they’re taking applications for men and women. It makes me think they’re maybe looking for a different man. I’m surprised by the way it’s worded on the TV.”
Joan also confirms that none of her friends from The Golden Bachelor have been officially approached for a Golden Bachelor in Paradise, though she has heard “rumblings” that the show is in the works. “I’ve heard it from producers and other people. There are rumblings talking about it,” she says. “In my opinion, they need to wait a little bit longer, because they only have one season of men and one season of women. I’m just not sure there’s enough people to do a good Bachelor in Paradise, unless they decide to bring new people in, which is not something they’ve ever done before. The problem with Golden is they only do one a year, and so that makes it hard to get a big enough cast.”
While Joan won’t be on the first season of Golden Bachelor in Paradise, given that she’s engaged, she’s hopeful that she’ll be on reality TV again in the future. “I would love to do Dancing with the Stars, so I hope I get asked to do that. That’s a common ask, but not a given,” she says. “I’m a huge fan of Traitors, so I would love to be on Traitors. I’m putting that out in the universe right now. It’s a phenomenal show. It’s hilarious, and I love all of the scheming and mystery. It looks so fun.”
Would she want to be a traitor or a faithful? “I want to be a traitor,” she says. “I’m not a particularly sneaky person. I’m brutally, weirdly honest, but I think that would be challenging for me and something fun to do.”
In the meantime, Joan is focused on her partnership with Aspercreme, a brand she’s used for years. (She’s specifically a fan of the spray and roll-on.”
“I’m finally at a time in my life where I have a lot of free time and I get to do the things I love, but sometimes it takes a toll,” she says. “Like I’m playing with my grandkids and I’ll take my grandson to the park and give him a piggyback ride home, and then my elbow hurts the rest of the night. Aspercreme is just an easy product to use. I’m taking something you apply directly to wherever your pain is. It doesn’t just dull the pain. It completely eliminates it. Other products smell like a candy cane when you’re done, and this one is completely odor-free, so you can use it anytime and anywhere, and nobody knows you’re wearing it. At this age I don’t want to slow down, but I also don’t want to be in pain, and it gives me the best of both worlds.”
