‘The Golden Bachelorette’ Finale Recap: 'Of Course I’ll Marry You!'

Her family showed up to size up Chock

Joan's oldest son Nick.

Disney

Joan's daughter Allie and her husband Noah, and her oldest son Nick and his fiance Brooke, were on hand to meet the final two contestants. “It’s a long journey [to romance]” she told them, repeating her favorite word. “It's a lot harder than you think, when you're at this age.” Then she introduced them to Chock. He told her kids that when he first brought their mom to meet his family, he kissed her — and demonstrated how – “because I wanted everyone to know how much I care for her.” Nobody could be more repetitively insistent about letting people know how he feels.

It worked like a charm, on Joan and her clan. Chock later chatted up Nick, and he seemed impressed: “You’re everything I hoped she would have found,” he said.  

Joan and Chock

Disney

Chock continued his aggressive pursuit 

Alone in a bungalow (or somewhere with a couch), he raised a glass to “our beautiful life together,” and gave her a present. “This gift is a symbol of my commitment to you. I would love for us to get a place in New York City." Then he laid it on even thicker: “Every minute I’m with you I get happier and happier,” he said. “I want to marry you and spend the rest of my life with you…. I love you.”   

Then Joan said...nothing

Chock was a little thrown when Joan didn’t say she loved him back. “That's always going to be a concern, when you're the first one to say the love word,” he observed, later. But Joan explained to the camera, “I promised myself I wouldn’t say I love somebody until the end of this journey.”

Joan and Guy

Disney

Then it was Guy’s turn

Unsuspecting Guy, totally smitten with Joan, was aglow – “I have fallen in love,” he announced — but by this point we knew he was in for a doozy of a letdown. Joan sat down with him and dropped the bomb: “My heart belongs to somebody else.” She wanted to tell him now, she said, “instead of putting you through meeting my family and showing up, you know, on the last day. I wanted to spare you all of that.” Guy was a wreck. He cried in her arms. “This is not what I was expecting at all… There’s no changing your mind?” No, she said, “I love you, but I love you in a different way.” Not as much, in other words.

She left him standing in the rain, crying. He said he feels “devastated, sick to my stomach.” Poor Guy.

Guy and Joan reunited in front of the live audience

“Watching that was heartbreaking,” Guy told the show’s host, Jesse Palmer (the actual breakup was a few months ago, kept top secret until now). “I didn’t expect it, I thought I was the guy, I was convinced.”

Joan came out, they hugged, and she told him, sincerely, “It was absolutely nothing that you did, you are an amazing man… I hope that we’ll be friends and that one day we’ll be double dating.”

Chock unsurprisingly proposed

Back in Bora Bora, Joan wore a sexy white wedding dress to meet Chock, in a sharp blue suit, on a windy beach.

“We’ve had a magical journey,” Chock told her. “Joan, I love you, and I want you to be in my life.”

He went down on one knee,” Joan, will you marry me?"

“Of course I’ll marry you,” she said. 

Then she asked him if he’d accept “this final rose.”

He said, “No, thank you, get lost.” Kidding! 

Joan and Chock reunited in the Los Angeles studio

“Joan has proven that love can happen twice!” said thrilled-looking host Jesse. 

The couple shared photos of the secret rendezvous they had since filming. “You couldn’t go out," said Chock. "We cooked, we played crosswords. I mean, we did everything.” Everything, people! 

Joan and Chock.

Disney

Joan gave every grownup some wise advice

Jesse asked the pair what viewers could learn from their journey, and Joan offered her insight: “If you are sitting at home and you're in your fifties or sixties and seventies, and you don't have love in your life, that everybody deserves to have love and to give love. And I hope that watching our journey maybe inspired you a little bit, gave you a little bit of hope. But hope isn't enough! You have to take action....Take the leap of faith, go out and find your person out there, it just makes your life so much better.”

Will they stay together longer than Gerry and Theresa did? Will Chock move to Maryland (she’s already told us she’s not moving)? Will they buy a fabulous New York City apartment? Stay tuned – and start looking forward to the next season of The Golden Bachelor. We are!