'Golden Bachelorette' Joan Vassos and fiancé share keys to blending families without conflict
When proposing on the beach, Chapple told Vassos, 61, "I am so absolutely happy to be in your life and that you're in mine. We've had a magical journey. It's just been absolutely incredible. And you're the most giving, selfless woman I've ever met in my life."
He also noted that he would honor Vassos' late husband by "loving her every day."
"That is the most important thing to me. And Joan, you will never be invisible to me. I'm going to tell you that I love you every day, I promise that. I still think I'm in a dream, and I'm just going to wake up. But Joan, I love you and I want you to be in my life," Chapple concluded.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Vassos and Chapple explained the advantages of blending families with adult children; Chapple is a father of two and Vassos is a mom of four.
"One of the benefits with our age is I don't have to be a father. These are adults. They have their own families. And so that [is] just taken out of the equation. I just don't, you know, it's not that I'm their father. I just want to be the guy that's with their mother and makes her happy. That's what's important to me," Chapple said.
Vassos added, "That's what's great [about] having adult kids, because, you know, you can leave them on their own, and they'll figure it out, and they're having fun."
Vassos noted that her children accepting Chapple has been a "gradual process." Two of her children flew to Tahiti and were present for the couple's engagement.
"Yeah. So it's been a little gradual. So two of my kids came to Tahiti for, you know, kind of the engagement part of this whole thing. And so they met him, and it didn't take them long to, you know, fall in love with Chock and know that, you know, he loved me and that he wanted to make me happy. And that makes them happy. That's what they want for me."
"My other two have now met. Well, one of the two was actually in the audience last night watching the show and he was there. And so we finally got to meet in person. But in the meantime, he's developed a relationship because Chock is a uniter," Vassos continued.
Vassos noted that Chapple has already started to "establish relationships" with her children in a "really playful way."
According to US Weekly , Chapple and Vassos will be having an engagement party in Los Angeles before going to the East Coast.
"It's going to be bigger than most weddings," Chapple told the outlet. "We've got friends coming in from around the country, and it's kind of our coming-out party as a couple. We're extremely excited about that."
During their interview with Fox News Digital, both Chapple and Vassos expressed that they are in no rush to say "I do." They have also gone back and forth on whether they will have a live, televised wedding.
"I'm talking myself into it a little bit. You know, there was a time where I thought, you know, our love story has been very televised, and it would be nice to, like, kind of bring it back to just us and have friends and family and, like maybe, you know, a destination location," Vassos said.
"But the more I think about it, we've taken all of these people along with us, millions of people along with us on this journey of us becoming, you know, falling in love and becoming a couple and getting engaged and like to stop at cold turkey, right? You know, right at our wedding and starting our lives together, maybe not the nicest thing to do. And to share that last little part of our journey together, I feel like would be the right thing to do," she concluded.
Chock added, "This is our lives and it's real. But I do think, as you'll call it, role models or the lead and the guy that got the girl, we have an obligation to really continue the love story and say this is how it's worked and that's why we're going to take it slow. We're just not going to go have a wedding in three months. We're going to do this thing right."
The couple plan on getting an apartment together in New York City.
"This first year, obviously, we have to kind of figure out life. Chock has a business in Kansas. I have kids and grandkids [in] Maryland. I'm not leaving Maryland, but he does have obligations in Kansas," Vassos told the outlet. "We know that we're going to spend time in Maryland and in Kansas, but then we have this really fun plan because both of us have always dreamed — and we're finally at this weird stage in life for making this dream come true — that we live in a big city and, specifically, we've always wanted to live in New York. So Chock surprised me and said, 'I want us to go find a place.'"
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Chapple and Vassos agreed that moving to New York City would be the perfect adventure.
"We both love the energy in the city and love that there's always something to do," Vassos said. "We just want to go out and walk and experience life — go to fun restaurants and [experience the] culture. We both have friends there. We're going to be there during the holidays, which is the best time ever in New York City. I think it's just a really different life than either one of us have ever lived."
From the first one-on-one date, Chapple and Vassos were able to bond over the deaths of their spouses. In 2021, Joan's husband of 32 years died of pancreatic cancer, and Chapple's fiancée, Kathy, who he was engaged to for nine years, died five months after being diagnosed with glioblastoma in 2022, per People.
Chock was previously married to his wife, Heather, for 12 years before they decided to divorce in 2010. They share two children: Tyler, 23, and Taylor, 25.
Vassos is a mother of four adult children: Nick, 34, Erica, 33, Allison, 30, and Luke, 28, and a grandmother of three.
