How reality stars plan to stay a pair after Paradise
Bachelor franchise couple aims to keep it real and keep things to themselves after TV start
Raven Gates and Adam Gottschalk may not be the most famous couple to come out of the Bachelor franchise, but they seem like one of the more grounded ones.
Gates, a 27-year-old business owner from Arkansas, and Gottschalk, a 28year-old commercial real-estate agent in Dallas, are living together almost a year and a half after they met shooting
Bachelor in Paradise in 2017. That’s nothing to sneeze at for a franchise that is ostensibly all about love but has been panned for not producing many lasting relationships.
Paradise — a spinoff that brings together past Bachelor and Bachelorette contestants for a few weeks at a Mexican resort — has been showing up its sibling series in that regard. In five seasons,
Paradise has yielded two marriages with children and two ongoing engagements (plus five more engagements which ended in breakups). Its failed relationships speak to the difficulty of transferring a relationship nurtured in the unreality of, well, Paradise into the real world, and keeping it going amid rampant tabloid and fan interest.
Gates and Gottschalk, who were in Toronto Friday for the annual Eligible Magazine TIFF Bachelor Party, have some advice in that regard: keep the lion’s share of your relationship to yourself.
“I think people are still super curious about our relationship,” said Gates, a former Bachelor fan favourite who met
Bachelorette contestant Gottschalk last year on Season 4 of Paradise.
Gates says she shares “a little bit” of her life with Gottschalk with fans on Instagram, “but we also have a clear, strict rule of what’s between us is between us and our relationship, at the end of the day, when our heads hit the pillow at night, is between him and I, no one else.”
Though they’re not engaged yet, Gates and Gottschalk are talking about marriage. But they don’t plan to follow in the footsteps of two Paradise couples — Jade Roper Tolbert and Tanner Tolbert, and Carly Waddell and Evan Bass — by getting hitched on TV.
“I want our vows to be so spiritual and connected with each other, and with our closest friends and our families, that I think being on TV for me would not be as genuine, and also I think that we just don’t want to be on TV again on the show. We just want to live our normal lives and get married just like normal people,” Gates said.
But she and Gottschalk did appear on the most recent season of Paradise because Gates was told that her best friend, cast member Tia Booth, “needed me in a critical way with her decision-making.”
So, on the Aug. 21 episode, she and Gottschalk joined Booth and Colton Underwood on a date. And Gates gave her friend some tough love, telling Booth she didn’t think Underwood’s intentions were good.
Booth ignored the advice and agreed to be Underwood’s girlfriend, but they split just three episodes later and Underwood was announced as the new Bachelor the next morning.
Gates says she believes being Bachelor was Underwood’s goal all along, a sentiment shared by many fans underwhelmed by the franchise’s choice of star.
Gates and Gottschalk also weighed in on the couples who ended the most recent Paradise season together. They have high hopes for Krystal Neilson and Chris Randone, two former franchise villains who got engaged, as well as Astrid Loch and Torontonian Kevin Wendt, who are dating and were seen around the city together last week.
They’re less sure about Kendall Long and “Grocery Store” Joe Amabile, although Amabile is moving from Chicago to Los Angeles to be with Long and compete on Dancing With the Stars. “I feel like their relationship is good, but there are too many differences between them,” Gottschalk said.
There has also been one notable breakup: fan favourite Jordan Kimball and Jenna Cooper ended their engagement just a day after the finale aired over a cheating scandal (Cooper has denied cheating with an ex and said she wants to get back together with Kimball).
Despite misses like that, Gottschalk and Gates still have faith in Bachelor in Paradise as a gateway to lasting relationships.
“I’m just a firm believer in it,” Gottschalk said.
“I think that the producers do a really good job taking men and women from previous seasons and putting them together.”
The one thing they don’t expect to last is reality-TV fame.
“Everyone (in the cast) has jobs to support themselves; that has to stay in the back of your mind because, when this is all said and done, this is the real world,” said Gottschalk.
“We live every day doing our normal things and paying bills like everyone else does. The Instagram ads and everything are good short-term money goals, but you’ve got to think about what’s coming.”