Marc and Marisia: oh so in love
The Bachelor SA’s Marc and Marisia can finally reveal they’ve been in lockdown together and have fallen even more deeply in love
WINTER has arrived in Cape Town with charact eri st ic force. Rain is pumping, wind is gusting and the temperature has plummeted. But these two don’t seem to mind – they’re snuggled up on the couch, keeping each other warm while a chicken cooks in the oven.
And the looks that pass between them via the video call speak volumes: they’re head over heels in love. Marc Buckner and Marisia van Wyk have done what the show that made them famous intended: they’ve fallen hook, line and sinker for each other.
For weeks fans of The Bachelor SA watched to see who would capture hunky Marc’s heart. After all the roses had been handed out and contestants left the mansion one by one, it was finally revealed that Marisia was the last woman standing.
But what viewers didn’t know is the final show was filmed back in December – practically a lifetime ago considering how the world has changed since then.
For months the pair were forced to hide their romance from the world so they didn’t let the cat out of the bag while the show was on. But now they can finally breathe a sigh of relief.
“Yes, we can be out in the open at last,” Marc says. “It feels very strange – like we should still keep it under wraps.”
Marc chuckles as he recalls how viewers tried to give him advice about who to choose even though filming had wrapped months before. “People would ask me, ‘Did you see this person did this and that in the house?’”
But by the time the show started M-Net had already sent Marisia and Marc on a secret romantic getaway to Thailand, where they had the luxury to work on their relationship away from the gaze of cameras.
“It was quite strange in the beginning,” Marc says. “I was excited to see her, but then weeks had passed since the final episode and we were in a foreign country, so there were all these things rolled into one.”
He needn’t have worried. Love blossomed on the island of Phuket as the pair kayaked, hiked and feasted on local cuisine. Welcoming the new year at their hotel also heralded the start of a new chapter.
“Marc was my last kiss of 2019 and my first kiss of 2020,” Marisia says. “And all my other kisses of 2020.”
MARISIA moved from Johannesburg to the Mother City at the end of January and intends doing her master’s degree in speech therapy at the University of Stellenbosch.
When lockdown was enforced in March it made sense for the pair to spend it together and it’s been great, Marisia says. “Spending more time with Marc means he shows me more of his
heart. It’s so real and it just makes me fall in love with him deeper and deeper.”
It’s been special for Marc too. “I didn’t realise how much I needed a like-minded person. She’s also very open to change and growing and developing.”
Yet as idyllic as everything appears now it hasn’t all been moonlight and roses. While the show was on gossip and rumour threatened to create a rift between them. There was talk Marc was already in a relationship and that he’d be sharing the money he made from the show with his girlfriend.
“It’s simply not true,” Marc says. “And besides, I wish I were paid that much.”
Gossip was one of the reasons they decided it would be a good idea to move in together during lockdown. “While we were together [before lockdown] things were fantastic,” Marc says. “But when we were apart there were a lot of outside influences – people making up stories that had an impact on the trust we had.
“Now that we stay together we know these stories that spread aren’t true, because you’re with me and I’m with you.”
Yet lockdown and having to keep their relationship a secret presented their own challenges. “We had a whole plan worked out,” Marisia tells us.
“In the mornings when we exercise I’d go for my run in one direction and she in the other,” Marc adds.
“And we took turns to do the shopping,” she adds.
“Marisia sent me photos of stuff in the shops to check whether she should buy it.”
But now that’s all in the past and Marc can’t wait to show Marisia around Cape Town and introduce her to everything that’s close to his heart.
“I really like Hout Bay, because that’s where I grew up,” he tells us. “There’s an ice-cream shop that belongs to a friend and I can’t wait to go there with her.”
Marc says his experience on The Bachelor was one of the most difficult things he’s ever done. “The people who take part get really emotionally invested. I didn’t want to hurt people and I didn’t want to have my own heart broken.”
It was so difficult for him that he couldn’t watch the show. “I watched the first episode and the last. For the rest I watched Marisia’s reaction and then we’d talk about it afterwards.”
Marisia says initially she watched full episodes, but as she and Marc settled into a relationship it was hard for her to see him having interactions with other women too. “I’d watch our love story and relive it because it was quite special how everything started, then I’d just skim through the rest.” She says they were physically attracted to each other from the start, but she’d been looking for something deeper all the time. Then there were some important turning points, like meeting Marc’s dog, Luna; falling off her horse during one of their dates; and meeting Marc’s parents, Marcel and Jenny. Marisia walked away with only a few bruises from the fall. “He took such good care of me when I fell,” she says. “To me it was so important because people must care for each other. “Meeting his parents also stood out for me. I knew how I felt about it when he met my parents. You’re in a vulnerable state.” Marc says when Marisia came off the horse he was deeply affected. “At that moment, the feeling that she may have been hurt . . .” he trails off. That accident wasn’t in vain, because like Marisia falling off the horse, they fell for each other and their love story had a sweet ending. Marisia says she prepared herself for the worst before the final rose ceremony. “He said things about the age gap. I thought I was going home, then he said ‘But . . .’” A smile spreads across her face. “I believed in what we had and my heart wanted to get to know him better.
HAS she at least taught the handsome Engelsman a few Afrikaans words?
“Yes,” Marc says, and proceeds to demonstrate how Marisia calls him. “Liefie, waar is jy? She looks for me all day long.”
Marisia has a belly laugh and Marc looks at her with a twinkle in his eye.
“Everything is back to front,” he says of his struggle to speak Afrikaans.
“His receptive hearing is very good,” the speech therapist in Marisia replies.
It means that he understands what’s being said. And regardless of whether this is thanks to his good hearing or to the one teaching him, we get the impression this couple will be learning from each other for a long time to come.
And that they’ll flourish doing so.
‘He took such good care of me when I fell’