First comes COVID-19, then comes marriage?
“Married at First Sight” cast members Rachel and Zack used their time in quarantine to prepare for the experiment of a lifetime by meeting their respective significant others for the first time at the altar.
“For me, because of COVID, there was a lot of TV watching, and I came across [the show],” Rachel, 33, said with a laugh in a new interview with Page Six. “I actually was with someone at the time, and we both watched an entire season. And I thought, like, ‘Wow, if I was single, this would be a great way to meet someone, you know, to meet a husband!’”
Rachel said that after her pre-show relationship ended, the opportunity to join the cast “kind of fell in my lap, and I thought, ‘I have to take this chance.’”
Zack, for his part, told us that he took an “analytical” approach, explaining, “When I got into the process, I watched literally every season, every episode, some seasons multiple times, just so I can see what I was getting into.”
“I really appreciated it,” he added. “I learned a lot just by watching, just by hearing the experts and looking at a number of relationships and, like, learning different tools and techniques to kind of help you be better in relationships.”
While Zack — who at 27 is the youngest cast member this season — couldn’t spoil the current status of his marriage to Michaela, 30, he did tease that his family may not have agreed with the show’s trusted relationship experts.
“My mom was very mad or confused as to why the experts didn’t give her a call so she can give them input on what she thinks I should be matched with or whom I should be matched with,” he said.
Zack added that his “friends were shocked because they didn’t think [he] needed to do something like this to find love.”
Rachel also couldn’t spill on where her relationship with Jose, 35, stands today, but she noted that her family thought she was “insane” for joining the show.
She explained that her loved ones eventually came around, however, saying, “My best friend and my mom, they’ve seen — I’m so open with them and they’ve seen my heartaches and everything I’ve gone through. And they said, ‘This is just another path you can take.’ And you never know. You just never know that this could be the one. Why would you, you know, not try it this way?”
“Married at First Sight” Season 13 premieres with a three-hour episode Wednesday at 8 p.m. ET on Lifetime.