During the Golden Bachelor season two finale episode Nov. 12, Cindy Cullers self-eliminated over Mel Owens’ revelations about getting engaged: “I’m not interested in being put on hold.”
Cindy Culler is detailing what made her call timeout on her budding romance with Golden Bachelor Mel Owens.
Despite making it to the finale of The Golden Bachelor season two alongside Peg Munson, the retired biomedical engineer ultimately decided to self-eliminate before she and Mel made it to the fantasy suite. After all, when it came down to it, Mel’s unreadiness for an engagement was a hurdle they simply couldn’t overcome.
“I have a philosophy,” she told the NFL alum during the Nov. 12 episode. “It is to behave as if my future husband will be proud of how I’m living. If it’s you, if it’s someone else. I mean, it’s a short process, for sure, and maybe you don’t have all the answers about me, about Peg, about yourself. I kind of want my guy to feel like he got struck by lightning and can’t live without me.”
She continued, “I think you’re great, but I’m not sure I want to free fall for that long.”
To Mel’s disappointed look, she solidified her choice before he walked her out in a heartbreaking exit.
“I’m sorry. It’s not what I want,” she concluded. “That’s really hard for me to say, you’re as good as they get.”
Prior to the breakup, Cindy and Mel had a candid discussion about the end game, with her point blank asking if he was ready to be engaged at the end of his run on the ABC dating series. This led him to admit, “No. It has to develop over time. I don’t have to propose when in my own head I go, ‘In two years, I probably would marry her.'”
For Cindy, that admission solidified that he was ultimately not the forever teammate the 60-year-old was looking for.
“I gave him every opportunity to say, ‘Just be patient with me. I’m falling for you.’ And he still couldn’t even go there,” she said in a confessional prior to her exit. “He’s like, ‘Just wait for two years. Let me see where I am in two years.’ I’m sorry, but if you find a person that makes a good partner, that’s your time to commit.”
Pointing to Mel, 66, noting that he didn’t see himself getting engaged for a year or two, she later emphasized, “I’m in my golden years. I’m 60 years old. And I’m not interested in being put on hold. He is just not my person.”
Peg, however, was on the same page as Mel when it came to walking away engaged, with the duo not leaving Antigua as fiancés. However, she didn’t leave empty handed, as Mel did place a Neil Lane diamond ring on that finger.
But the jewelry, as Mel told her, “represents our commitment to love, to give us time to figure out together what our future holds.”
And it proved to be a winning playbook for the duo. “You know what’s nice about being in your 60s and going through life,” Peg, 62, shared on After the Final Rose, “you get to write your own love story—and we’re on the same page. That’s a love story the way that we get to do it.”
To see what other Bachelor Nation couples have either made the choice to say “I do” or go their separate ways, read on.
Peg Munson & Mel Owens
Even before Mel Owen’s season of The Golden Bachelor kicked off, he was hit with a few penalties after going on the MGoBlue Podcasts With Jon Jansen and insisting, “if they’re 60 or over, I’m cutting them,” adding that he wanted them to “try to stay away from the artificial hips and the wigs.”
And while his forever teammate Peg Munson is a fellow sexagenarian, his connection with the retired firefighter and bomb tech is quite explosive, the former NFL linebacker praising her as “high-energy” to Glamour.
Though he didn’t take a knee during his November 2025 finale, the sports lawyer still offered up a Neil Lane sparkler, saying, “This represents our commitment to love, to give us time to figure out together what our future holds.”
