A match made in reality TV heaven? Blake Horstmann and Giannina Gibelli both made waves while looking for love on screen before joining forces.
Bachelor Nation met Horstmann when he competed for Becca Kufrin’s affections on season 14 of The Bachelorette. After finishing as the runner-up on the 2018 season, the DJ came under fire during season 6 of Bachelor in Paradise after his pre-show hookups with Caelynn Miller-Keyes and Kristina Schulman were revealed on the beach. While the 2019 season was airing, Horstmann took to Instagram to share his text messages with Miller-Keyes.
“I don’t regret it. I’ll never really apologize for that,” he said on Us Weekly’s “Here for the Right Reasons” podcast in 2021 while reflecting on the drama. “I’m never gonna regret [or] apologize for defending myself.”
Horstmann added that “for a long time” he regretted ever doing the spinoff.
“But now, not really. I’ve become very passionate about mental health; we’re able to help a lot of people. I’ve kind of embraced that role in Bachelor Nation, which has been pretty fun and pretty cool,” he said. “And at the end of the day, like, all those people that were, like, ‘hurt’ by me, they’re freaking all happy and engaged or in relationships. So, it’s like, had I not gone down there, would it have happened the way it did? I don’t know. So no, I don’t necessarily regret it.”
Gibelli, for her part, appeared on season 1 of Love Is Blind, getting engaged to Damian Powers. While the pair split on their wedding day, they reconnected after the cameras stopped rolling. The duo called it quits for good in 2021 after he was accused of cheating on her with Too Hot to Handle’s Francesca Farago, which he denied.
“Me and Damian haven’t been dating for a couple of months now. I’ve moved on. I feel really, really good. I’m definitely at a really good place in my life,” she told Entertainment Tonight in August 2021. “For the first time in like three years I feel like I don’t have to keep some sort of my life private anymore. We were just under wraps about everything. I was still trying to figure out, how does my life look without him in it? It’s been a long time but I feel really good. I’ve processed it all. I’m such at peace.”
Gibelli was back to secret romances by the end of the year, however, when she met Horstmann while filming an upcoming reality show.
Scroll through for a timeline of their relationship: