18 minute read
The Bachelor
Critical fans, catty women, crowded dates: Falling in love on The Bachelor has alwayspresented a unique set of relationship hurdles. But for Chris Soules and Whitney Bischoff, who got engaged last November at the end of his season of the hit ABC reality romance show, navigating the logistics of starting a life together may be their biggest challenge. Bischoff, 29, a Chicago-based fertility nurse, will have to uproot her life to move to the tiny town of Arlington, Iowa, where her fiancé, 33, has deep roots and owns and operates a profitable corn farm. But while other contestants balked at the idea of moving to a town of 429 people—even for “Prince Farming,” as he was anointed by the show—the bubbly blonde says she doesn’t see it as a sacrifice. “It’s always been important for me to stand on my own two feet,” she says. “But I would not have accepted the proposal if I wanted something different. I’m so in love.” The couple—who will spend the next several months in L.A. while Soules competes on Dancing with the Stars—sat down with PEOPLE to talk about their future.
Now that the cat’s out of the bag, what are you looking forward to?
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WHITNEY: Being a normal couple! It doesn’t have to be fancy. It will be nice not to have any more hard goodbyes. CHRIS: We’ve been in hiding! I want to not feel like anyone is in charge of what we do next.
Chris, you had a very strong connection with your final three girls: Kaitlyn, Becca and Whitney.
CHRIS: It’s not normal to fall in love with three women. But I was there. I was honest with my feelings, and I was honest with them. I had the good fortune of having a tough decision.
You said getting rid of Kaitlyn was like throwing darts. Were you really that conflicted about your decision?
CHRIS: Maybe that was a poor choice of words or a bad analogy, but it was how I felt. [In my mind] I was dating one person at a time; that’s the way it was to the end. They were the only ones in my life when I was with them.
You seemed like you really wanted it to work with Becca, but she couldn’t give you what you needed. What happened?
CHRIS: Becca had some challenges with commitment. She’s not ready to fall in love, and she’s not ready to settle down. Clearly I had strong feelings for her, but I had to start looking at it from a logical perspective. The more we talked, I just saw that it would be a tough transition for her, especially to even consider living my lifestyle.
Did Whitney seem more open to it? CHRIS: After she came to my home
WITH THIS RING After saying goodbye to Becca Tilley, Soules got down on bended knee for Bischoff.
All About the Bling!
“Chris liked that it was strong, but he also wanted it to feel sweet and feminine,” says designer Neil Lane of the 4-carat ring (featuring an emerald-cut diamond surrounded by more than 100 smaller diamonds and two accenting baguettes). “He chose right. It really fits Whitney.” Bischoff agrees: “I love it! But the best part is that Chris picked it out himself.”
and I saw how she reacted to being on the farm, I felt like I could see a part of her life being in Arlington. And seeing her with my family, I felt like she was a missing piece.
The idea of moving to a small farm town was a thread throughout the season [see box]. How important was it to you to find someone who could live there?
CHRIS: There is a part of me that is self-conscious about Arlington. Not everybody is willing to live in a community that small. It was an issue when I was on The Bachelorette with Andi [Dorfman], and it was always something that was in the back of my mind throughout the process of being on The Bachelor.
What was your take on it, Whitney?
WHITNEY: I was the last girl to go home with him, but maybe that was a little bit of an advantage because I got to hear everyone’s take. By the time I saw it, I knew it was going to be small. I can’t say I knew it was going to be that small, but I was prepared!
Chris, you had told Andi that there was an “opportunity to be a homemaker” in Arlington. Whitney has a successful career. Do you want a wife who works or who stays at home?
CHRIS: I want someone who has both, to a certain extent. Someone who has a career and is driven, like Whitney, and now wants to have the next chapter and be a mother. WHITNEY: My entire life I always knew I wanted to be a wife and a mom, but I think it’s important to establish yourself and work hard. My career is something that defines me. It’s important to me, and it’s something I’m passionate about. But once I have kids, absolutely I would love to be able to stay at home with them. CHRIS: I want Whitney to be happy— that’s most important, [whether] it’s working and raising children or being a stay-at-home mother. I think it’s a blessing to be able to stay at home. You can always go back to your career. [Dads] stay at home too, though that is something I don’t plan on being!
DOWN ON THE FARM Back on his farm “it’s all corn and soybeans, and we raise hogs,” says Soules. Not to mention hard work. “We work 15 to 18 hours a day sometimes, and I’m there, on the tractor, making things happen.”
Inside the Tiny Town of Arlington, Iowa
Chris and Whitney crashed a glamorous wedding on The Bachelor, but date nights in Iowa will be decidedly more low-key. The nearest movie theater (just one screen!) is “a solid 20 miles away,” says Soules. And pizza delivery? “No way! We’re in the middle of nowhere.” And Whitney will surely become a regular at Arlington’s only commercial business: Charley’s Quik Shop. “You can get everything there,” says Soules of the gas station mini-mart. “Six-packs of beer, chips, Advil, toilet paper. I spend a lot of time there!”
Dancing with the Stars] first. But I own my place in Chicago and don’t plan on selling that. I’m keeping my job, but I’ve kind of switched roles a bit. It offers me a lot of flexibility so I can work from anywhere. I think it will be a good transition for us to start the journey together in L.A., and then we can take the next step. CHRIS: From L.A. to Arlington. A great transition. They’re similar places!
What do you look forward to about life in Arlington?
CHRIS: Building a family together is No. 1. And having Whitney be part of the farming operation. It would be a really cool thing. WHITNEY: I have no plans to quit my job. I won’t lose myself in a man. But I know [farming] is something Chris is so passionate about. I’d like to learn about it, and I hope that our children can learn the trade as well. I think I look pretty good on the combine! CHRIS: There are plenty of things you would look better than me doing!
Whitney, what will you miss most about life in Chicago?
WHITNEY: I have a great support system and group of girls back home. When it comes to my job or my friendships, anything I focus on I’m going to give 100 percent. CHRIS: But we’ll get there in Arlington. It might take some time. What I love most about Whitney is I feel like we have not only a strong connection, but we have a partnership.
Will you have a long or short engagement?
WHITNEY: I don’t think you can put a time limit on something like that. We’re taking it step by step. When we feel it, it will happen. But I anticipate it working out. I plan to do this once!
Has it been hard watching the show? Chris kissed a lot of women.
BACHELORETTE BOMBSHELL!
A NEW CHAPTER “The whole Bachelor journey was mentally and emotionally taxing,” says Soules. “But it was a great experience, and it brought me to Whitney.” Adds Bischoff: “I’m grateful. And I’m ready to move forward!”
Kaitlyn & Britt Face Off in the New Season
The most dramatic Bachelorette announcement in history? In a (nearly) unprecedented move, ABC announced that fan favorite Kaitlyn Bristowe and emotional beauty Britt Nilsson will battle it out to be the Bachelorette. The two will both meet the 25 male contestants on the first night, but in a twist reminiscent of Byron Velvick’s season of The Bachelor, “the men are going to have the ultimate say about who they think would make the best wife,” host Chris Harrison explained on the After the Final Rose special. While Nilsson called it “an amazing opportunity,” Bristowe said her initial reaction was, “Well, that’s not ideal,” but also quipped, “I just know we’ll end up in the same hot tub at some point.”
CHRIS: It’s tough to relive hurting others. WHITNEY: I actually haven’t watched. I lived it! One thing that I respect the most about Chris is that he did everything 100 percent. Does it make me feel warm and fuzzy inside [that he had strong feelings for other girls]? No. But is it a realistic thing? Yes.
What have you discovered about each other postshow?
WHITNEY: I’m learning things about myself because I’ve never lived with a man. In the morning I cannot speak before I’ve had two cups of coffee. We haven’t spent that much time together. We’ll continue to learn. CHRIS: Whitney is who she is. She’s thoughtful and loving. And we’re both very real. So it’s been a pretty smooth transition in that regard.
What do you hope for your future?
WHITNEY: I’m looking forward to the life that we’re going to start. I think a lot of great things are going to happen. CHRIS: We had this great love story that now we get to build upon. We can start with a new love story in real life. Whitney is exactly who I’ve been looking for for a long time. She’s what I’ve always wanted.
KATE WINSLET ON
ROCKNROLL MARRIAGE Winslet and her husband (in Hong Kong in 2012) met after surviving a fire at Richard Branson’s Caribbean compound.
Despite earning six Oscar nominations (with one win, for The Reader) and starring in one of the biggest blockbusters of all time, Titanic, Kate Winslet is still seeking career advice—from her older kids Mia, 14, and Joe, 11. “They do very much have an opinion on what I do and don’t do these days,” she says, laughing. So when she was asked to star as malevolent leader Jeanine in the Divergent series, based on Veronica Roth’s bestsellers, they said, “ ‘Yeah, Mom, you should definitely do it!’ The idea that their mom would play this baddie was incredibly exciting,” she says. Happily creating a new chapter in her life with husband Ned Rocknroll, their son Bear, 1, and several new roles, Winslet isn’t at all fazed about turning 40 this year. “I don’t know why, but I’ve never felt more confident and happy.”
BACK TO WORK 1. She plays one of the designers of Versailles in the upcoming A Little Chaos (with Jennifer Ehle). “It was nice to be in a period film again,” she says. 2. With Ansel Elgort in Insurgent. 3. She’ll play early Apple employee Joanna Hoffman in Steve Jobs. 1
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Insurgent brought out her wicked side.
Winslet plays her first true villain in Jeanine, who hunts Shailene Woodley’s Tris in the series’ second film. “We were looking for power and command and smarts, which Kate delivers in spades, but she also gave Jeanine style and glamour,” say producers Doug Wick and Lucy Fisher. Winslet says her intimidating onscreen persona didn’t freak out her kids. “I’m their mom, and they’re never scared of me! So, no, the crazy act didn’t work on them.”
She’s on a roll—with Ned Rocknroll.
Winslet married the British businessman (born Abel Smith, he’s the nephew of Virgin mogul Richard Branson) in 2012 and welcomed baby Bear a year later. She credits her husband with helping her find balance between her movie roles and family time at their home base in the U.K. And she’s on a busy streak with up to five films coming out this year, including Oscar hopeful Steve Jobs, which she’s shooting now. “My creative life in the last few years has been really, really colorful for me. I have know, not just the ones where you wake up in the morning and you go, ‘Oh, that will go away in two hours’ time.’ No, they’re there. That’s the way that it is.”
a wonderful man in my life who is so incredibly supportive that it makes it possible for me to have those experiences,” she says. “I’ve got a really wonderful little family. We all laugh a lot.”
Regrets? She has one.
Her kids actually get along.
Mia (her daughter with first husband Jim Threapleton) and Joe (her son with second husband Sam Mendes) “love” having a baby brother, she says. “They’re absolutely adorable together. They’re very helpful, I must say. I really love hanging out with my kids. They’re terrific people. They’re kind of happy in who they are, too, and that’s all you can really hope for for them, that they love being themselves.”
“I chose to have children quite young, and I wouldn’t change any part of that at all,” she says. “But I didn’t go to college. I started working quite young and had a lot of responsibilities. I do notice the life of a college student, that while there is incredibly hard work, there ‘I’m definitely is still room for plenty of fun going to get to my 40th birthday and feel I’ve and plenty of experience and probably experiment as well. I really don’t long for it or wish that I’d had it, but I’m curious what that might have earned it’ been like . . . just for a week.”
She’s not afraid of her big birthday.
“I’m turning 40 this year, and I’m definitely going to get to my birthday [in October] and feel I’ve earned it,” she says. She laughs at any suggestion that she’s barely aged. “I have the kind of wrinkles that are here to stay now. You
What’s next?
A GROOM’S DEADLY SCHEME A Wedding to Kill For
A LOCAL THEATER STAR, DANIEL WOZNIAK CONFESSED TO A GRISLY DOUBLE HOMICIDE—AND COPS SAY WEDDING BILLS WERE THE MOTIVE
The Killer and the Bride
He was an actor who “had performing under his belt,” former pal Alex Syiek says of Wozniak (after his 2010 arrest). Buffett (after her 2012 arrest) was raised with “homeschool values,” adds Syiek.
Daniel Wozniak had a lot to celebrate: The wellknown Costa Mesa, Calif., theater actor was getting married in a little more than a week, and he and his beautiful actress fiancée, Rachel Buffett, had both scored lead roles in a local production of the musical Nine. But underneath his joyful, charismatic facade, Wozniak was hiding secrets that quickly turned deadly. On the verge of being evicted from his apartment and without the money he needed for his wedding or honeymoon, police say, an increasingly desperate Wozniak carried out a shocking get-rich-quick scheme that ended in a brutal double homicide. “I didn’t think he was capable of this,” says a longtime friend of Wozniak’s. “Then again, anyone is capable of anything when your life is crashing around you. I think he felt his was. And he wanted to give Rachel everything in the world.”
It came at a staggering price. Wozniak, now 31, is in Orange County jail facing trial in the upcoming months on two counts of felony murder in the May 2010 deaths of his neighbor Samuel Herr, 26, an Afghanistan war veteran, and Juri “Julie” Kibuishi, 23, a college student studying fashion. (His former fiancée, Buffett, 27, has been charged as an accessory after the fact but is free on bond and denies any involvement.) Police zeroed in on Wozniak after he pocketed money from Herr’s bank account and arrested him at his bachelor party just two days before the wedding. “I’m crazy and I did it,” he confessed to police. “He was a financial mess,” said Det. Michael Delgadillo, according to grand jury testimony. “He had no way of paying for the wedding or the honeymoon. He wanted to go on a cruise, and he had no way of paying for it.”
A Gruesome Plot Unfolds
2010 Wozniak and Herr meet as neighbors at the Camden Village apartment complex in Costa Mesa. “Sammy had a heart of gold,” says Herr’s aunt Miriam Nortman.
MAY 21, 2010 Wozniak lures Herr to the Los Alamitos Joint Training military base theater, killing him with two shots. MAY 21, 2010 That evening, Wozniak performs the lead role in the musical Nine at a local community theater. MAY 21, 2010 After the show Wozniak kills Kibuishi and poses her body in an attempt to frame Herr for the crime.
MAY 22, 2010 Wozniak dismembers Herr’s body—which had an identifying tattoo—and scatters the parts in El Dorado Nature Center, where Capt. Ron Smith of the Costa Mesa Police Dept. (pictured) directed the search. MAY 27, 2010 Wozniak is arrested at his bachelor party and confesses to the crimes in interrogation.
The Victims: A War Vet and a Student Who ‘Loved Fashion’
Herr “was a guy people liked having around,” says his friend Larry Gonzales. “He had your back. He was always joking.” Kibuishi “was the loveliest girl,” says her friend Alison Dambach. “She always had a smile and was so full of life.”
According to court documents, the groom-to-be lured his neighbor Herr— who had amassed some $50,000 in combat-pay savings—into the attic of an empty theater on the Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos, Calif., where he fatally shot him twice in the head with a .38-cal. semiautomatic pistol he’d stolen from his father’s home. Astonishingly, Wozniak then hit the stage as scheduled in Nine. “People really did genuinely love him—he was the life of the party,” says Debbie Guajardo, who caught his performance the week of the murders. “He was happy. Everything seemed great.”
Following the show, Wozniak lured Kibuishi to Herr’s apartment by posing as Herr via texts from the dead man’s phone. When she arrived, Wozniak fatally shot her twice in the head with the same pistol and posed her body in an attempt to frame Herr. “He said he tried to orchestrate it to try to make it look like it was Sam who had [killed Julie] out of a rage of jealousy,” Delgadillo testified. To complete the scene, Wozniak returned to the theater attic and meticulously dismembered Herr’s body, scattering the pieces throughout El Dorado Nature Center in Long Beach.
That the charismatic Wozniak could commit a crime so gruesome has
stunned all who knew him. “He always made you laugh, and you could always talk to him,” says his friend Janelle Mortensen. A film buff who grew up in a middle-class home in Long Beach, he was eager to include his friends in his wedding day, says Mortensen, who received an invitation: “He was so excited.” Friends and family of Herr and Kibuishi say both were known to offer help to pals in need—making them unwitting prey in Woz‘He took a lot of time planning what he did. I just niak’s murderous plan. “Sam saved every penny during deployment,” says his dad, Steve. His late son, he adds, “would give you can’t wrap my the shirt off his back.” head around it’ Similarly, loved ones —DEBBIE GUAJARDO describe Kibuishi as a nurturer who had been tutoring Herr in his community college courses. “She was the one who always took care of everyone,” says her mom, June. “She always wanted to do things for others.” As the court date continues to face delays, leading to mounting frustration for the victims’ families, those who knew Wozniak remain baffled. “Who was the real Dan?” asks Guajardo. “He was a great actor, because he sure had all of us fooled.”
By Michelle Tauber.
Christine Pelisek in Costa Mesa
the
THE STARS OF CINDERELLA
