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For Joan Vassos, University of Maryland graduate and star of ABC’s “The Golden Bachelorette,” the chance of finding a forever love is dwindling down week by week.
In the most recent episode of the reality TV series, Vassos accompanied four men to hometown dates, meeting their family, friends and loved ones, before narrowing it down to the final three.
Part one of the series’ finale begins tonight as Vassos heads to Tahiti with the three remaining men: Chock Chapple, a business executive from Wichita, Kansas; Guy Gansert an ER doctor from Reno, Nevada; and Pascal Ibgui, a salon owner from Chicago.
Vassos, 61, who lost her husband to cancer after 32 years of marriage, is a mother of four, a grandmother of two and lives in Montgomery County.
Earlier this month, The Sun interviewed Vassos about how the season is going and if she has any advice on dating.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: What’s the Maryland dating scene like for women of a certain age?
A: I’m not sure if it’s different in Maryland versus anywhere else. Dating at this age is just plain hard. … The pool of people is small, and the pool of people that are a good match for you is really small. So like confining it to a state, because geographically that’s easier, is very, very limiting.
After my husband had been gone for about two years, I thought, I’m not getting any younger, I’m getting older. I really want somebody in my life, and so, I need to put myself out there. And I said to a friend: “Do you know anybody? And everybody’s like, ‘Oh no, I don’t know anybody that you’d like.’ Or ‘I don’t know very many single people.’”
I tried a dating app — that was like having a job. You had to make sure you were on it all the time, and responding and flirting via text. Then you would meet the person and they weren’t at all who you thought they were.
I talk to people all over the place, and they’re all saying the same thing, that it’s really hard to meet somebody, including all the women that were on “The Golden Bachelor” with me. We were all there for a reason.
Yeah, it would have been easy out in the world — we wouldn’t have dated on national TV. But we did it because it’s hard to find somebody. It’s almost like fortune favors the bold. So you have to do something very bold to put yourself out there.
What would be the perfect date in Maryland? What would you do?
You know, I love Annapolis. It has the water element, and I have some family there, so it feels very homey to me. I love the little restaurants. I love going and picking crabs. So if it was with somebody that wasn’t from this area, that would be a really fun thing to do — teach somebody how to eat crabs. I mean, Old Bay is like our favorite spice in the …read more
Source:: The Mercury News – Entertainment
