Golden Bachelorette star Joan Vassos says that her late husband, John, would be “happy” for her amid her engagement to Chock Chapple during an exclusive interview with Life & Style.
“He’d be happy I’m living life. I don’t think that he’d want me to mourn him for my whole life,” Joan, 62, tells Life & Style about her late husband while promoting her role as an ambassador for PanCAN PurpleStride. “Just a few days before he passed away, he said to me, ‘You need to go out and live a life. You need to find somebody else. We had a happy marriage. You’re a great wife, and I want you to find happiness again.’”
Joan says it “took a while to get to that point” and she sometimes thinks she’ll “never have my old life back and that still makes me sad.”
“But I know that I need to move on. I had 32 wonderful years with John, and I could have 32 more years with somebody else,” she continues.
Before fans watched Joan get engaged to Chock, 61, during the season 1 finale of The Golden Bachelorette in November 2024, she was married to John until he died following his battle with pancreatic cancer in 2021. The pair share adult children Nicholas, Erica, Allison and Luke.
After rising to fame on the ABC show, Joan is using her newfound fame as an ambassador for PanCAN PurpleStride. The walk to end pancreatic cancer took place on Saturday, April 26, at Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC, as well as in nearly 60 other communities across the nation.
“The fact that I’m doing something positive with this platform … I got this amazing opportunity to be The Golden Bachelorette, and it gave me this little bit of a platform,” she says before sharing that she believes John would be “proud” of her for “doing something positive with it other than just doing something that satisfied me and finding another love.”
Joan continues of her fame, “I’m taking that a step farther and maybe using it to do something good.”
While reflecting on what she believes John would tell her today, Joan says, “I know that he would not want anybody to go through the journey that we went through. It’s painful. It’s a painful cancer. The treatment is brutal.”
“I know that he would never want to think that anybody else would have to go through what we went through and what he went through,” Joan says. “And so, I think that he is looking down saying, ‘Yeah, it’s about time. Let’s make a difference here.’ The fact that we have our whole family and so many of our friends joining us for the walk, I think that he would feel humbled, and he would be very appreciative.”
Joan opened up about John’s passing during her time on The Golden Bachelorette. More recently, she reflected on his death when she and Chock saw Left on Tenth on Broadway in New York City in January.
“What a night for @chockchapple and I at our first Broadway show as a couple! @leftontenth was phenomenal and we got to go backstage after to meet the stars: Julianna Margulies, Peter Gallagher, Peter Francis James and Kate MacCluggage!” she captioned photos of them backstage at the show with the cast.
After noting that the “story really hit home” for her, Joan wrote, “Today is the fourth anniversary of John’s passing and these talented actors captured the feelings I had the days and years after that terrible day. It was a beautiful story about allowing yourself to fall in love again after loss in your golden years.”
“There is always a light in the end and theirs were bright as we all cheered for them as they took their bows!” she concluded. “Thank you to the cast and team at Left on Tenth for a night we’ll never forget!”
