Fans won’t catch Ivan Hall looking for love on the beaches of Paradise — for a good reason. The Bachelorette alum opened up exclusively to Us Weekly about reconnecting with his college girlfriend following his time on the ABC series.
“We actually go way back. I met her in college. She went to a different school than me,” Hall recalled on Us Weekly‘s “Here for the Right Reasons” podcast, explaining that he went to Texas Tech while his girlfriend went to the University of Texas. “We dated a little bit, then spent some time apart. She went to med school. I moved to Florida for an engineering job and stuff like that. Fall of last year, she got her first residency [job]. She’s an anesthesiologist. She got her first job here in Dallas and then [we] started to reconnect from there on. I did always kind of think with me and her that it could work out long-term. We are a very good match from the same area.”
Fans met Hall on Clare Crawley‘s season of The Bachelorette, which turned into Tayshia Adams‘ journey for love.
“I definitely grew strong feelings for [Tayshia],” the engineer told Us. “It is a very unique situation that I’ve never gone through at all before. So I was trying to process everything [after I was eliminated]. I definitely liked her a lot.”
Hall told Us that he “rationalized” their split “pretty quickly” as they broke up over religious differences.
“I’m just not religious. I just don’t affiliate with anything. And that’s just how I am,” he explained. “I get it. Like, everybody wants to marry who they wanna marry. I just totally went with that and that’s what I stuck with. So it was pretty quick for me to get over it, to be honest.”
His current girlfriend, meanwhile, he’s “known forever.”
“She’s a good person. I’m very happy that we’re together now,” he gushed. “Things kind of just randomly work out. Who would’ve thought I would’ve taken this detour in life, going on The Bachelorette and my Florida job and all that stuff. And then she randomly gets a job in Dallas now and lives not too far from me. It all works out at the end of the day. I’m very happy right now.”
When it comes to his “detours,” Hall noted that his love watched The Bachelorette, but didn’t tune into season 7 of BiP.
“I don’t think she watched too much of Paradise. I think she knows some of the highlights, but, like, she didn’t really watch the entire thing,” he explained.
He concluded: “My girlfriend is such an amazing catch. We grew up in the same area, so we kind of just know each other a little bit. And the fact she’s just so driven as an anesthesiologist is great. We just get along.”
