After The Golden Bachelorette’s Joan Vassos got engaged to Chock Chapple, she set out on a new journey—playing matchmaker for friends Jordan Heller and Leslie Fhima.
Golden Bachelorette Joan Vassos is taking on a new title: matchmaker.
While she’s now engaged to contestant Chock Chapple, the reality star is trying to help her fellow Bachelor Nation members strike gold in the love department.
One duo she thought might want to steal each other for a sec is Jordan Heller from her season of The Golden Bachelorette and Leslie Fhima—who, like her, appeared on Gerry Turner’s season of The Golden Bachelor last year.
“They were the first match that I thought of in my mind,” Joan told E! News in an exclusive interview. “I thought they were perfect together. They’re both from the Midwest. They live close enough to each other that a quick flight or even a drive would be possible. Both are Jewish. They’re both super active, young at heart.”
Still, she couldn’t set them up right away—but for the right reason. Not wanting to spoil the season, Joan waited until after viewers watched her send Jordan home on the Oct. 23 episode before seeing if there could be a rosy connection between him and Leslie.
“I waited a couple days, literally right after he was off, and they had already met,” the 61-year-old continued. “They had met at a soccer game, and I texted them the next day, and they said, ‘Oh, we met last night.’ And I was like, ‘OK, you want my hand in this, or you want to take it from here?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, we got it from here.'”
While Leslie has clarified she and Jordan aren’t dating—though she revealed on The Ben and Ashley I Almost Famous Podcast they have texted—they aren’t the only ones Joan wanted to set up.
“We have three of them in the works right now, and they’re talking,” the school administrator from Rockville, Maryland told E!, refraining from naming names as she says the connections aren’t far enough along, “and I have another two I’m thinking about might be good matches.”
However, not all the guys have needed Joan’s help.
“They’re obviously getting some messaging, and I think five of them right now are in relationships,” she added. “So, the playing field is a little less big right now.”
Still, she can’t help playing cupid, even at her recent engagement party.
“Had a lot of people there,” Chock told E!, “and Joan spent half the time just going, ‘Are you single? Hey, I want you to meet someone.'”
And if the guys don’t end up with their forever plus-ones, well, then Joan and Chock are happy to see them be the next Golden Bachelor.
“We start with Charles Ling—what a great personality, and I think America would love it,” the insurance executive, 60, from Wichita, Kansas, shared. “You’ve got Jordan with an incredible wit and personality. You’ve got all these gentlemen that bring something. Keith [Gordon], the girl dad. At the party, he was the life of the party. He had 20 people around him the whole time. Gary[Levingston], class guy. I don’t want to omit any of them, but just any one of them I think would do a great job.”
For now, keep reading to see where more Bachelor Nation stars stand in their relationships.
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.”