From the start of her Golden Bachelorette journey, Joan Vassos made it clear that she wasn’t willing to relocate from Maryland for a relationship. However, before Chock Chapple proposed during the November 13 finale, the 60-year-old insurance executive from Kansas suggested an alternative: getting an apartment together in New York City.
Chapple, in a joint interview with Vassos, 61, told PEOPLE, “We’ll be going back and forth between Kansas, Maryland, and New York. We’ll have a full-time place in New York, and whenever we get the opportunity, we’ll be there. We’ll get it figured out next year.”
Vassos plans to visit Chapple’s family in Wichita, Kansas, while he will spend time with her in Washington, D.C. “But when we want to be alone together, we’ll probably be in New York,” she says.
Joan and Chock’s holiday traditions will blend as they make their way between three states
The couple will fly to NYC on Friday, November 15, and start apartment hunting on Monday, November 18. Their sights are set on Manhattan’s West Village. “That’s what we think right now,” says Vassos.
Hoping to settle into their new place by Christmas, the couple is committed to making Vassos’s favorite holiday tradition a reality. She explains, “I love Christmas in the city. If nothing else, we’ll certainly get a hotel or an Airbnb.”
The couple, with six children between them, plans to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas in Maryland. Thanksgiving will provide an opportunity for their kids to spend extended time together for the first time.
“They’ve gotten to know each other a little bit over the phone and texting, but they’re finally going to spend four or five days together,” says Vassos. “We can’t wait for them to be together because we feel like they’re going to have a lot of fun with each other.”
For Thanksgiving, Vassos says her family prepares the meal as a group, though she adds, “There’s certain things that your kids want you to make because it’s like the classic they’ve grown up with, so I’ll be doing all those dishes.”
The couple also has a special trip to look forward to: a Disney World vacation that Golden Bachelorette host Jesse Palmer gifted them and their families during the finale. “That’s the gift of a lifetime,” says Vassos. “Disney World is very, very fun, and you have to do that with your kids and your grandkids.”
Reflecting on her past, Vassos adds, “It’s a dream I had before John passed away. We were just getting grandkids, and I looked at my friends who were taking their grandkids to Disney World and thought, boy, that’s going to be really hard when I have to do that alone.” Now, with Chapple by her side, she says, “I have this wonderful man that I get to do it with. They gifted that to us, so that was just a dream come true.”
