The Bachelor fans have a lot to celebrate as Nick Viall, a former frontrunner on the show has found love and given his final rose to the woman of his dreams. After several painfully public efforts at finding love in the franchise, Viall is engaged to his girlfriend of more than two years, Natalie Joy, who is famously not from the reality show world.
Viall spent years looking for love in Bachelor Nation. The Waukesha, Wisconsin native first made an appearance on Season 10 of The Bachelorette, where he was the runner-up for the leading lady, Andi Dorfman.
Sadly, Viall suffered the same fate when he returned for Season 11 of The Bachelorette, starring Kaitlyn Bristowe. Following that, he appeared in Bachelor in Paradise‘s third season. In 2017, during his season of The Bachelor, the ABC personality asked the season’s finalist, Vanessa Grimaldi, to marry him. However, the pair broke up months later.
And after his failed attempts to find love in Bachelor Nation, Viall turned to his DMs. Joy, a surgical technologist and model messaged Viall on Instagram, and the two quickly started dating. Speaking to E News about how they met, Viall said:
“I think DMs are a great place to meet people. My current girlfriend slid in my DMs. Real clever, it said, ‘You’re unreal.’ I guess it was funny. I was more curious, wondering why I was unreal.”
Although Viall and Joy have been an item since the summer of 2020, the couple didn’t go public with their romance until 2021. Since then, the two have been inseparable, as evidenced by their many Instagram posts about one another, red-carpet appearances, and interviews discussing their romance. Joy has also been a guest on The Viall Files, a podcast about love and dating.
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Nick Viall and Natalie Joy are engaged after over two years of dating
After two and a half years of dating, Viall and Joy got engaged. The podcaster and reality star popped the question on January 12, 2023, at Create Studios in Venice, California, followed by a party with close friends and family.
Viall posted a series of photos to Instagram from the couple’s engagement shoot, in which they smile, embrace, and show off Joy’s ring. “For the rest of my life, it’s you,” Viall wrote as a caption for the photo. The reality star proposed with a magnificent 18-karat yellow-gold set engagement ring featuring an elongated cushion-cut diamond that he designed and created with Brilliant Earth.
Fans react to Nick Viall and Natalie Joy’s engagement
For almost a decade, Bachelor Nation fans have been hoping that Viall would find “the one,” and he finally did with Joy. After the happy pair announced their engagement, fans and friends flooded the comments section to congratulate them. Bachelor franchise alums, including Serena Pitt, Greg Grippo, and Jesse Palmer, sent their best wishes to the happy couple.
Fans on Twitter shared their congratulations, with one user saying that’s had “such a long journey” and were thrilled to see he finally found The One.
But while some fans are happy for Viall and Joy, others are bothered by the couple’s age gap. Viall is 42, while Joy is 23. One Reddit fan wrote, “I wish them well or whatever. I still think the age gap is kind of weird. Just because something’s not illegal doesn’t make it not weird …”
