After choosing each other to be their second acts, “Golden Bachelorette” Joan Vassos and her fiancé, Chock Chapple, have decided to not live together.
At least for now.
While Vassos has her life in Maryland, Chapple has his in Kansas. Due to neither one wanting to uproot their respective families, the couple has chosen to split their time between each place, while also looking for a home in New York City.
And while the situation has worked for them so far, in a new interview with Parade, Vassos, 62, says she is aware of the naysayers.
“Everybody looks at this like .... ‘There’s no way this can work because you’re not together every minute,’” Vassos told Parade. “We don’t feel the same way about it,” she continued.
“We feel like we both have pretty rich lives in our 60s. You find somebody [at that time of life], chances are they have stuff going on. They have family or they have jobs or they have friend groups, or they have hobbies. So you might not need to spend every waking moment together or you might not need to live in the same city, and that’s how we feel right now about it,” Vassos explained.
Instead of uprooting their lives, Vassos and Chapple, 61, have made the effort to immerse themselves into each others’ lives.
When there is “something fun happening” in either Maryland or Kansas, Vassos and Chapple travel to be with each other.
“He had a party at his country club on Friday night. We had a blast. I loved being there,” she explained to Parade.
“We’re not living with each other, but we’re kind of living our best lives,” Vassos explained.
“We get to travel and do all the fun things and be together for those, and then the mundane things of, like, me babysitting my grandkids and him going to work — he’s kind of doing it by himself, which I don’t need to be there [for], and he certainly doesn’t want to be here with me babysitting my grandkids or taking my mom to the doctor or whatever.”
And as for when Vassos and Chapple plan to say “I do,” Vassos told Parade that they aren’t in a rush, but they also won’t be engaged “forever.”
“I wanna marry Chock,” she said, but admitted that their “journey is a little weird. ... We are doing the dating process backwards, so I feel like we have a little time of just like, we’re having fun dating and not having a million things we have to do.”
When the time is right, Vassos said she and Chapple will celebrate their love with an intimate ceremony. “We don’t need this big extravagant thing that you do when you’re younger.”
