Here’s How Long Everyone’s Favorite Couples From The Bachelor Really Lasted

Since 2002 ABC’s franchise-spawning dating show The Bachelor has promised to find more than two dozen guys their one true love. But how many of the couples who walked off into the sunset in the season finale managed to stay together once the cameras stopped rolling? Here’s a look at the fate of 20 of the most popular pairings.

20. Alex Michel and Amanda Marsh

And where better to start than the very first season of The Bachelor, when no one could have had any idea that the show would become such a juggernaut? As portents go, the end of the 2002 series wasn’t promising: the man looking for love, Alex Michel, didn’t end up proposing to winner Amanda Marsh. His lack of commitment was further exposed nearly 12 months later when it was discovered he was still in communication with the show’s runner-up.

In an interview with TV show Inside Edition, Marsh revealed that Michel had stayed in touch with Trista Rehn just in case their relationship didn’t work out. As you’d expect, the chosen one gave the two-timer his marching orders. Both parties ended up walking down the aisle with other people, though, twice in Marsh’s case. Firstly she got wed to, and had a baby with Jay Caldwell, an old friend. Following their divorce, Marsh married ad executive Chris Evans.

19. Aaron Buerge and Helene Eksterowicz

Unlike his predecessor, Aaron Buerge did pop the question at the end of Season Two. But his engagement to Helene Eksterowicz lasted just five weeks, with the bachelor apparently revealing a lack of emotional investment. The chosen girl later told People magazine, “It felt like a bomb dropped. I said, ‘I feel very deceived by you. You’ve told me every single day that you love me, and now this is it?’”

Luckily for Eksterowicz, this proved to be a blessing in disguise. In 2013 she got hitched to Andrew Goodman, a tech consultant with whom she now lives in New Jersey alongside their daughter. Buerge also managed to find someone he was more emotionally invested in, Angye McIntosh. The couple wed in 2009 and are now parents to three kids.