What happens when a self-described relationship expert faces rumors that his wife cheated on him while they were dating? Nick Viall, the former star of The Bachelor and current host of the dating-themed podcast The Viall Files, is unfortunately finding out. Cheating rumors about the couple have been popping up on a few obsessive Reddit threads for the past couple of months, and now they have hit the mainstream, thanks to a stray Instagram comment from fellow reality star Harry Jowsey. What is going on? And who are all these people again? Let me explain.
Viall, 43, and Joy, 25 — yes, that’s an 18-year age gap — got married in April of this year in a “Vogue on the farm”-inspired ceremony documented by People and the New York Times’ “Style” section. They are parents to a baby girl named River Rose, born in February. Before meeting Joy, Viall was a prolific reality-TV dater: He appeared on four seasons of The Bachelor and its related spinoffs between 2014 and 2017. He has since styled himself as a dating expert and published an advice book in 2022 titled Don’t Text Your Ex Happy Birthday.
Joy, meanwhile, is a surgical technologist from Georgia. According to the story Viall and Joy shared with their podcast listeners and the Times, Joy slid into Viall’s Instagram DMs in 2019, and the two began a casual long-distance relationship. They got serious in 2020, went “public” in 2021, and got engaged in 2023. (The proposal was grand: Viall staged a fake premiere of the Tom Hanks movie A Man Called Otto in order to lure Joy to a Los Angeles venue, where he was waiting with 200 candles and a professional photographer.)
The couple has not really faced any public controversy, save for one instance in which Finneas, Billie Eilish’s songwriter-producer brother, accused Joy of plagiarizing his girlfriend’s birthday tribute to him on Instagram. Kind of funny but ultimately harmless.
HAHAHAHAHA LMAOO @ClaudiaSulewski https://t.co/pj1KYXm476
— FINNEAS (@finneas) September 28, 2021
Joy and Viall have also been relatively open about the beginning of their relationship on Viall’s podcast (Joy now makes regular appearances on the show). He has specifically revealed that they were not exclusive right away. “We kind of kept hanging out, and she finally got to a point where she was like, ‘I want to date,’ and I was kind of like, ‘I don’t know,’” he said. This little bit of wiggle room on their commitment timeline has, perhaps, allowed said cheating rumors to bloom.
In May of this year, Reddit users began posting multiple threads suggesting, with great and fantastical details, that Joy had an affair around the time the couple got engaged. To be clear: None of this has been reported or confirmed, but redditers don’t care. They have a whole story that involves an ill-fated trip to Paris, Instagram blocking, and custom sneakers. The tale probably would have stayed on Reddit if not for Jowsey, another prolific reality-TV dater currently starring on Netflix’s Perfect Match.
Viall apparently discussed Jowsey’s appearance on the show on his podcast, and Jowsey responded in an Instagram comment at the end of June. “He can’t keep my dick out of his mouth ????,” he wrote, eloquently. “50 year old man gossiping about people in their 20s dating, he should be more focused on his wife cheating on him and repairing that then worrying about me ????????.”
Viall and Joy have not directly addressed any of this, but Viall did respond to a question about “Reddit rumors” on the Lady Gang podcast shortly after Jowsey made his comment. “I’m aware of a ton of rumors about me,” he said. “And I know that I’m unaware of 90 percent more because I don’t read it. I don’t read my own press. I don’t read my comments. I’m not on Reddit — I actively stay off of it. And I’m just unaware of things that people say.”
That’s probably for the best, considering the things that people say on Reddit are insane. If Viall and Joy did want to address the rumors, however, it would make for a good podcast!
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