Flaunt yourself — sort of. Katie Thurston has revealed that she joined Raya after she broke up with John Hersey, but she’s not quite ready for romance.
Stars who used Paradise to find love
“Have you guys heard about the dating app Raya?” Season 17 of the Bachelorette Party, 31, began in a TikTok video posted on Tuesday, July 26. “It should be, like, an elite dating app that you should, for example, apply to, get approved and blah blah blah.”
The Washington native thought she would have to wait a while for approval, so she decided to apply anyway, even though she had just split up. “I thought: “I will apply now, and in six months I will start dating.” Well, I was immediately approved. I wasn’t ready, but that’s okay.”
Instead, the undergraduate graduate decided to use the app to find friends, but that didn’t work out the way she planned either. “I walked up to someone and we were talking,” she recalls. “And then I become unsurpassed. Only for friends!” In the caption to the post, she joked: “I joined Paradise and I can’t even make friends.”
Katie Thurston Sheds Light on John Hersey Split: Everything She Said
Last month, the bank’s former marketing manager and 28-year-old Hersey confirmed that they had broken up after less than one year of relationship. “Statement: No, we are not together,” Thurston wrote on Instagram in June.
Later, the bartender clarified in his own Instagram post, telling followers that he likes to share “special moments” with them. “I do not know if it will ever be easier to share sad ones. As Katie stated earlier, we are no longer dating,” he continued. “This decision wasn’t easy, and obviously it wasn’t easy to make.”
Bachelor couples who broke up in 2022
Hersey and Thurston made their romance public in November 2021. The reality star previously sent him home during the second week of her bachelorette season, which aired earlier that year. In the season finale in August 2021, she got engaged to Blake Moines, but Thurston and the 31-year-old Canadian native announced their split less than three months later.
The wildlife manager later accused his ex-fiancee of emotionally cheating on him with Hersey, but Thurston denied the accusation.
“We both knew our relationship wasn’t working out,” she said during a November 2021 appearance on Caitlin Bristow’s Off the Vine podcast. “My relationship with Blake was a completely separate situation [from] my relationship with John. There was no overlap. There was nothing but respect. It’s just two different situations.”
