“I feel I dodged a bullet.”
Even as a huge fan of The Golden Bachelor, I can admit that season two fell a little flat compared to the earnest and compelling love story of the first season. After all, it began with a controversy and ended without a proposal — thanks to its emotionally reserved lead. But even though the fans may have moved on, for Mel Owens’s runner-up Cindy Cullers, the heartbreak still stings. “I’m still mourning that I don’t have a future with Mel,” she tells Katie Couric Media in a recent interview, “and I’m wondering what my future looks like.”
Even though Owens caught plenty of flak for his wooden on-camera demeanor and for displaying the emotional depth of an ashtray, Cullers says their relationship “was real, for sure” — and, for the record, says, “He has a lot more charisma than it seemed on TV.”
(She has a theory as to why he came off so stiff, by the way: “I feel that Mel not being a cast member [before being chosen as the lead] stunted his ability to open up and let the show do its job of finding love for you.”)
“I did fall for him,” she admits. “I think he’s very smart, a lot of fun, and very handsome. But I don’t need somebody in my life who isn’t committed to me.”
For anyone who watched the show, that dig doesn’t need explaining. But for the unfamiliar, Cullers is referring to her confrontation with Owens on the beach in Anguilla and their ensuing conversation during After the Final Rose. The gist is that Cullers asked Owens whether he planned to get engaged at the end of the show, and he completely balked at the question.
Hearing him say that he didn’t envision a proposal — which is the well-established end game of the series — left her in disbelief. “I was trying to figure out, did you really mean what you just said? Do you understand the show that you came on? 23 of us left our lives in hopes of finding love this way, as crazy as it might be…”
Owens’s narrative, which he shared with KCM after the finale, was that he was committed, but on his own terms — and didn’t respond well to Cullers trying to force an engagement. “I was taken aback with Mel’s fierce and very staunch response to what happened,” Cullers tells us. “I was not asking to be married by the end of the week. I was looking for somebody who was serious about starting a relationship.”
Owens told us that his mind was already made up by the time Cullers walked away: “I had a stronger connection with Peg,” he said. “I think she knew it, and she wanted to leave so she wouldn’t have the heartache.”
Cullers doesn’t buy that. “I think he’s rewriting history as to what happened on the dock a little bit. Mel was very conflicted about what he wanted, and he was showing me all the signs that he wanted a relationship with me. And I don’t blame him — listen, he’s got to live with Peg, and he doesn’t want her to feel like a consolation or that she wasn’t the one.”
She adds, “Looking back at the episode, I feel I dodged a bullet. He’s a man who doesn’t know what he wants.”
There was a moment, even before the engagement question, that illuminated this. “I asked him a question on the dock that nobody has really picked up on: Why did it take him so long to get married the first time?” she recalls. (Owens was 43 when he got married in 2002.) “If he had said, ‘I just hadn’t met a woman I loved enough to marry,’ that could have shifted things for me, but he didn’t. He just said, ‘It wasn’t time.’ So Mel was still playing that three-way jump rope and trying to decide when to jump in. I want somebody who sees me and says, ‘let’s go do this.’”
Despite the heartbreak, Cullers doesn’t have regrets. “I learned a lot about myself,” she says. “I believe that Mel is a little avoidant in his attachment style, and I know I have been too. The Golden Bachelor clearly showed me that I’m ready to stop avoiding love and be open to it.”
Which begs the question: Would a turn as the Golden Bachelorette be in her future? “To have that opportunity would be wonderful,” she says, but there’s one caveat. “I would want to know more about how they’re screening candidates. The women on the show were phenomenal, but can you find 23 men for me who are actually willing to commit?”
Whatever happens next, she’s choosing to stay optimistic. “I believe that the right man is out there searching for me fervently. And when he finds me, there’s nothing that will stop him from getting to me.”
