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After finding — and then losing — romance onThe BachelorettefromLove Is Blindfailed,Blake HorstmannandGiannina Gibelliwere cautiously thoughtful about how they’d announced they’d found love with each other onAll Star Shore.
“We decided that we’re going to do as best we can to keep this relationship a secret, but we also didn’t want to sacrifice it,” Horstmann, 33 toldE! News. “We didn’t want to sacrifice hanging out together. We didn’t want to sacrifice doing trips together. We wanted to make sure that our relationship was strong before going public.”
Though talk of the connection was swirling for quite some time beforeAll Star Shore’s premiere last month (PEOPLE confirmed the pair were datingin January), Horstmann and Gibelli, 29, waited until the show debuted togo Instagram-official.
In a change of pace from their previous shows, Horstmann saysAll Star Shorewasn’t exactly primed for romance.
“The way you see the way that this relationship happened was very just real and raw and genuine and there was no pressure ever to be together like onBachelor in ParadiseandBachelorette,” Horstmann said.
“In fact,” he said, “it was the opposite. Sometimes producers and cast members were like, ‘Leave each other alone. You guys are on each other all the time. Stop and compete.'”
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Gibelli’s almost-marriage was featured onLove Is Blindseason 1. Though she spent the season withDamian Powers, he ended their relationship at the altar during the show’s finale. Theyreconnectedoff camera but eventually called it quits for good.
The reality star previouslytold PEOPLEhow her breakup with Powers impacted her ability to find love again. “I’ve always had the philosophy of, it doesn’t matter what happened in the past. It depends on what you do with it, moving forward,” she said. “I just didn’t want to be bitter. I wanted to always have my heart open and to be able to let love in, in whatever shape or form that may be, because that’s just the sweet part of life.”
Taking that approach, Gibelli found Horstmann and fell into a relationship she jokes was “the worst-kept secret ever.”
“Within the first couple of hours of meeting him, we were already next to each other, like Velcro,” she recalled. “We were like sticky tape, all the time.”
Noting that Horstmann is “just such a genuine person,” she couldn’t help but gush that “he’s just a delight to be around that I genuinely wanted to get to know him and to be around his energy, and he felt very comfortable.”
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All Star Shoreis available to stream on Paramount+.
source: people.com
