Hours before Bachelor alum Matt James announced his breakup with Rachael Kirkconnell, he posted a video of the two of them in happier times.
Matt, 33, and Rachael, 28, were seen enjoying a slice of pizza and a beer in London in a TikTok video he shared on Wednesday, January 15.
“Pizza pit stop for anyone traveling through London,” the reality star captioned the clip.
The following day, Matt revealed that he and Rachael had ended their relationship after four years together.
“Father God, give Rachael and I strength to mend our broken hearts. Give us a peace about this decision to end our relationship that transcends worldly understanding,” Matt wrote alongside a photo of himself and Rachael that was taken during season 25 of The Bachelor. “Shower our friends and family with kindness and love to comfort us. And remind us that our Joy comes from you, Lord.”
Matt and Rachael first met on the popular reality dating show in 2020. While he didn’t pop the question during the finale, they still chose to leave as a couple. However, as the season aired, the news of Rachael’s racism scandal broke when photos of her attending an antebellum-themed fraternity party and of her wearing a Native American costume resurfaced and she found herself at the center of massive amounts of backlash.
In February 2021, Rachael posted about the scandal via Instagram and said that she “didn’t recognize how offensive and racist [her] actions were” and that she was “ignorant” and her “ignorance was racist.”
Matt also addressed the scandal in a lengthy statement of his own.
“The past few weeks have been some of the most challenging of my life, and while there are several episodes left of the season, it is important that I take the time to address troubling information that has come to light since we wrapped filming, including the incredibly disappointing photos of Rachael Kirkconnell and the interview between Rachel Lindsay and Chris Harrison,” the former NCAA football player wrote in part via his Instagram Stories.
However, a few weeks later, Matt and Rachael had reconciled, and she later spoke about their reunion with Us Weekly.
“We just needed to take that time away from everyone and really figure everything out, and I think that we were just so sick of the outside noise, and we were like, ‘You know what? We need to just put all of that aside and really focus on our relationship and how we feel about each other and nothing else,’” Rachael said in an interview published in September 2021.
The news about their split in 2025 came as a shock because the two seemed like they were still going strong. In September 2024, Matt exclusively told Life & Style that he wasn’t letting the pressure to propose to his longtime love get to him and said that he and Rachael were “in a good place.”
“Anything will affect you as much as you let it affect you,” Matt said at the time. “You just have to have thick skin. Being in New York helps a lot. Being a former athlete helps. You just grow accustomed to it. It just goes back to doing what makes you happy and doing what you feel is right. That’s why I think we’re in such a good place.”
He continued, “We just kind of go by the beat of our own drum. I think that’s why it works for us. We just try to make each other happy and no one else. We just kind of live in our own bubble and do the things that make us happy and that seems to have been working for us.”
