Bachelor Nation Alums Share Their LGBTQ+ Coming Out Stories

Gabby Windey, Colton Underwood and more Bachelor Nation alums are living their most authentic lives after appearing on the franchise.

Windey, for her part, revealed in August 2023 that she is dating a woman for the first time. The season 19 Bachelorette, who split from ex-fiancé Erich Schwer in 2022 after a televised proposal, sparked a romance with comedian Robby Hoffman.

“I didn’t really know to pay attention to it,” Windey said during an appearance on The View about realizing she was attracted to women. “I think when this happens, there’s some shame obviously surrounding it, so I think I had to a little bit navigate through the shame. Like, what is it? Where is it coming from? But ultimately, I always just want to kind of do me, do what I want, figure it out later.”

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She continued: “I was on dating shows dating men and a Broncos cheerleader, so it was like my whole world was male-gaze. … Obviously, it’s about sexuality, but it’s also the person I met. Like, she is so special. She makes me feel so safe, so loved.”

Underwood, for his part, publicly came out as gay in April 2021, one year after splitting from Cassie Randolph, who he met when he was the season 23 Bachelor. Shortly after Underwood came to terms with his sexuality, the former football player found love with Jordan C. Brown. They wed in May 2023.

Scroll down to find out which other members of Bachelor Nation are proudly waving rainbow flags — and read their coming out stories:

Windey, who led season 19 of The Bachelorette alongside Rachel Recchia, has not put a label on her sexuality. However, she did tell the View hosts in August 2023 that she could see herself exclusively dating women moving forward because Hoffman is “my girl” and “the best.”

Underwood documented his coming out journey — including how he told his loved ones —  with a Netflix docuseries, Coming Out Colton.

“The reason I came out is because I’m ashamed, and I’m sort of mortified, of what got me to this position in the first place,” he said on the show, noting in the past he questioned how he could be religious and play football as a gay man.

Underwood and Brown announced nearly one year after their wedding that they were expecting their first baby via surrogate. Their son is due in fall 2024.

Tilley, who appeared on Chris Soules and Ben Higgins’ respective seasons of The Bachelor, announced in May 2022 that she had been quietly dating singer Hayley Kiyoko for four years. While Tilley is comfortable embracing PDA and calling Kiyoko her girlfriend, she doesn’t identify as a lesbian.

“Leading up to this point, I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m gonna have to address, like, my sexuality, my label. I've never connected with that.' And I think my story is different from other people,” she said during an episode of her “Scrubbing In” podcast that May. “This isn't something, like, I personally navigated my whole life. When I look back at things, like — I loved Kate Winslet and Leonardo [DiCaprio] in Titanic and I loved Joey and Pacey in Dawson's Creek, you know? … When I met Hayley that was the first time I had that specifically for a woman.”

After appearing on Underwood’s season, Burnett starred on Bachelor in Paradise season 6. During her time on the beach spinoff, Burnett revealed that she is bisexual. Her then-ex Kristian Haggerty, who was not previously a member of Bachelor Nation, arrived on the show several episodes later to rekindle their relationship.

“I don’t care who sees this. I know that I love this girl,” Burnett gushed during the show. “I’m just so happy that I found her and I can definitely picture being with her for the rest of my life.”

Haggerty proposed during the BiP finale, but they split in October 2019.

“It’s hard to know the right way to say these things, or the right time. Today seems like both and neither,” Corrigan, one of Clayton Echard’s past contestants, wrote via Instagram in June 2022. “Waking up this morning to my first Pride in NYC I was so excited. I sprung out of bed, went to get a coffee — bought a flag — and quickly began feeling anxious. Overwhelmingly so. Am I ready? No. Am I scared? Yes. Will ‘the right time’ come? Qualify it. It’s important to me today to share with you all that I am queer. More specifically I am, always have been, and always will be bisexual.”

Bristowe came out as bisexual to her loved ones years before appearing on Soules’ season of The Bachelor, but she withheld the news from producers when she joined the show.

“I actually do think they knew but when I was filling out all the questionnaires, they’re like, ‘You have to be 100 percent honest, like don’t hold back.’ So, they asked if you’re into girls and I was like, ‘Yeah,’ and then the psychologist … had to sit with [me] for three hours,” she recalled during a May 2023 episode of the “Out & About” podcast. “She was like, ‘Don’t tell [producers] that you’re into women, they might spin it.”

Bristowe became the Bachelorette lead in 2015, getting engaged to Shawn Booth. After their eventual split, she moved on with Jason Tartick, but they ended their relatioship in August 2023 after more than 4 years together.

Shortly after fans watched Peter Weber send Caves home, she announced via Instagram that she received a “crazy” number of DM’s about her sexuality.

“I’m fluid. I’ve been with women and I’ve been with men. I’m open-minded,” she wrote via her Instagram Story in January 2020. “To me this really isn’t a big deal. People in my life know this about me. But I thought that I’d share this because some people are curious and I’m not ashamed of who I am.”

Seiter, who was eliminated on the first night of Bristowe’s season, came out as bisexual several years after his brief reality TV appearance.

“My awareness of my bisexuality manifested later in life. … I was homeschooled from preschool until college by parents who were born-again Christians. We belonged to a sort of Christian cult of other homeschooled children, where we had to follow pretty draconian rules about what we could and couldn’t do, say, and think,” he told Instinct magazine in June 2023. “I believe my upbringing, in the homeschooled Christian niche that we were brought up in, stayed with me, both consciously and unconsciously, for years after leaving home for college.”

He added: “I always knew as an early teen I was different sexually, I just don’t think I had the vocabulary to articulate what that difference was. Now, with hindsight, I can see clearly that I’ve been starkly aware of my bisexuality and attraction to men and women since at least college. I strongly believe a large part of me was suppressed for my childhood.”