Bachelor Nation loyalists know that every season of The Bachelor or its spin-offs is advertised as the “most dramatic season yet,” but for this past season of The Golden Bachelor, which wrapped last week, that may have actually been true. (And not just because it’s only the second season of this spin-off.) Fans witnessed a double-whammy of a self-elimination and no proposal at the end. Having just one of those things happen would have qualified as jaw-dropping — but both? It’s basically unheard of.
In case you missed it (or didn’t read our recap), Cindy Cullers chose to go home (right before what would have been their trip to the Fantasy Suites) over what she viewed as his lack of commitment. She had asked Owens if he could see himself getting engaged at the end of the process, and he dodged the question.
During the After the Final Rose special, Owens and Cullers rehashed their breakup, and Owens explained that he didn’t want to give a firm answer about his and Cullers’ relationship because of his strong feelings for his other finalist, Peg Munson. Cullers, meanwhile, expressed that she was simply trying to suss out whether Owens would be proposing at all at the end of the journey — which he now tells Katie Couric Media he never intended to do. “For some odd reason, she wanted to get married [right] off the show,” Owens tells us of his runner-up. “I [wasn’t] going to get married [right] off the show.”
Speaking to KCM, Owens balks at the sped-up timeline of The Golden Bachelor (which in previous seasons, filmed for four to six weeks) when compared to real-life dating. “It’s like the saying: first comes love, then comes marriage,” he says. “The other one’s not going to happen,” he jokes, confirming that at 66, a baby in a baby carriage is not in the cards. “That’s not what love is to me. It’s not leapfrog, get married, and then find love later.”
In real life, it would be unhinged to get engaged to someone after knowing them for a month or two — but that’s a feature of The Bachelor, one that adds to the stakes (and the fantasy) of the whole experience. Agreeing to be the lead of The Golden Bachelor and not wanting to get engaged is like going on Love is Blind and expecting to know what the person you’re dating looks like from the jump: It goes against the point of the show. So we couldn’t help but wonder: Had Owens ever seen the show? “I was a really ardent fan for five or six years,” he says, but he fell off as a viewer when he had kids. “I didn’t know anything about The Golden Bachelor at all when they cast me,” he admits. “I had to go back and watch it.”
Did he know going into filming that he would not get engaged, despite that being the expectation of the lead? Was this whole season a giant waste of time? “I didn’t have a hard line of, ‘I’m not going to get married, I’m not going to get engaged, I’m not going to fall in love,’” he says, but he does admit, “I was skeptical that I was going to find anyone.” Despite that assertion, Owens insisted at other points in the interview that his idea of an endgame did not include a marriage proposal. “I’m committed, but on my own terms,” he says. “I wasn’t looking to get married right off the show.”
Owens took a swipe at Cullers and her self-elimination during our interview. “I had a stronger connection with Peg. It was evident. I think she knew it, and she wanted to leave so she wouldn’t have the heartache.” Cullers, for her part, said during After the Final Rose that she doesn’t regret her decision. “I don’t need to convince a man to love me,” she told Jesse Palmer.
Even though a wedding is not on the horizon, Owens did find love with 62-year-old retired Las Vegas firefighter Peg Munson. “I wasn’t expecting it, but then all of a sudden it happened. She’s beautiful and lovely. She treats me well, and we have a lot of fun together. That’s what love is to me.”
