Catherine “Cat” Richards and Jake Singleton-Hill did not connect inside the Love Is Blind UK pods, but they did in the real world.
“I am with someone from the pods. I’m with a guy with a dog, and the dog lives with us,” Cat, 29, teased on the Friday, August 23, episode of the “Bailiwick Express” podcast.
Both Cat and Jake, 32, went into the pods on the first season of the British spinoff of the dating show, finding connections with other people. From the first episode, Cat was involved in a love triangle with Ollie Isaac and Freddie Powell. Ollie, 32, was also getting to know Demi Santana Brown, so Cat ultimately withdrew from the triangular situation and focused on her bond with Freddie, 32.
While Cat and Freddie got engaged sight unseen, their relationship faltered once they met face-to-face. By the finale, Freddie opted against getting married to Cat.
Jake, meanwhile, also got engaged in the pods but wasn’t featured on the Love Is Blind episodes. After filming wrapped, Cat got in touch with him.
“His journey was very rough in there, like, the way he was treated, but I reached out to him,” she recalled. “I hadn’t seen him — because I had only seen Freddie and the couples on the retreat — [then] I saw him on social and I was like, ‘Oh, that Jake! I wonder if he’s the one from the show?’”
According to Cat, she DM’ed Jake to “check in” on him after the pod experience, and they quickly started hitting it off.
“[At first,] he was like, ‘Wait, aren’t you married?’ I was like, ‘Funny story,’ because obviously [it] was what would have been two weeks after that. So, I was like, ‘Well, no,’ and then we FaceTimed,” Cat added. “We were on FaceTime for about five hours that evening and then we spoke every day for five weeks.”
She continued, “Then, I went to go and visit him for the weekend, and now we live together with the dog!”
Cat initially rejected Jake during the experiment because of his attachment to his dog, as well as the fact that he was “popular” amongst the other women.
“In the girl’s lounge, everyone talks about their connections,” Cat explained on Friday. “Jake’s name was out there [while] Freddie’s was not. I only had a true connection with Freddie, like, I only wanted him. To me, I wouldn’t change that because I wouldn’t be with Jake if that didn’t happen.”
Love Is Blind UK is currently streaming on Netflix. The official reunion drops on Monday, August 26.
