Ben’s loss is Jordan’s gain! After Ben Higgins blindsided JoJo Fletcher during the season 20 finale of The Bachelor, she sent off on her own journey to find love.
The real estate developer’s final four included Jordan Rodgers, Robby Hayes, Chase McNary and Luke Pell. In the end, it was clear that JoJo’s heart belonged to Jordan. And while they got engaged on the Bachelorette season 12 finale, which aired in August 2016, JoJo later revealed that the former football player almost didn’t get down on one knee.
“Jordan had said, ‘Unless this is 100 percent where we are both at, I don’t want to do it for the sake of the TV show and I won’t.’ There was this whole thing with producers not really letting him talk to my parents again after they had met,” she said on the “Betches Brides” podcast in September 2019, noting Jordan didn’t want to pop the question just “for the sake of the TV show.”
While the Vanderbilt alum ultimately proposed, the twosome didn’t rush down the aisle.
“If Jordan and I were to have gotten off the show engaged and started planning a wedding right after, we probably would not have made it. It probably would have ended up in divorce,” JoJo explained. “And I hate saying that because I never would ever want that for my life, but I truly do think if we would have taken that route and rode out that high and jumped right into it, it wouldn’t have been good for us.”
Three years after the show aired, Jordan decided it was time to propose to JoJo again — with a new ring.
“I love @joelle_fletcher with all my heart!! I always wanted to re-propose, with no cameras, no producers, no drama … just us,” he wrote in August 2019 via Instagram. “Our first engagement was so real, and meant so much to us both, but as we start to actually plan our wedding for next year I wanted to do it all over again, OUR WAY!”
Something that the couple did for the first time in June 2020? Watching their season of the show as a condensed version of The Bachelorette season 12 airs on ABC as part of The Bachelor: The Greatest Seasons — Ever!
“I think I got really lucky the first time around because Jordan didn’t watch my season. He’s like, ‘I don’t need to see that!’ But now he’s like, ‘I’m super excited to watch!’” she told Us Weekly exclusively. “I’m like, ‘Oh great. Four years later we’re gonna rehash all this?’”
The pair survived the dramatic walk down memory lane. After six years of dating, two postponed wedding amid the coronavirus pandemic, they tied the knot at Sunstone Winery in Santa Ynez, California, on May 14, 2022.
Scroll through for an update on JoJo’s most memorable contestants:
