What Happened to Kaitlyn Bristowe?
The Short Answer
Kaitlyn Bristowe is thriving. The former Bachelorette, now 41, has reinvented herself as one of reality TV's most successful podcasters with Off the Vine, announced a move from Nashville to New York City in April 2025, and continues to be a candid, funny voice on dating, reality TV, and life after the franchise.
Bristowe, born June 19, 1985, in Leduc, Alberta, Canada, first appeared on The Bachelor in 2015 before headlining The Bachelorette season 11 the same year. A decade later, she has outlasted almost all of her reality TV peers by building an independent media brand.
Her journey from reality contestant to media entrepreneur is one of the franchise's great second acts, and her move to New York signals a new chapter focused on growth, creativity, and city life.
Who She Was: The Bachelorette Season 11
Kaitlyn Bristowe entered the Bachelor universe as a contestant on Chris Soules's season of The Bachelor in 2015, where her quick wit and unfiltered humor made her an instant fan favorite. Though she finished third, viewers demanded more.
ABC obliged by naming her the Bachelorette for season 11, in a twist that initially paired her with Britt Nilsson before Bristowe won the role outright. Her season was notable for its frankness: she spoke openly about intimacy, clashed with producers, and chose Shawn Booth in the finale.
The Booth engagement lasted three years before ending in 2018. But Bristowe's real win was not the relationship; it was the platform, which she parlayed into a durable career long after the roses wilted.
Off the Vine: Podcast Empire
In 2017, Bristowe launched Off the Vine with Kaitlyn Bristowe, a podcast that became her primary business and creative outlet. The show features celebrity interviews, dating advice, and Bristowe's signature no-filter commentary on Bachelor Nation and pop culture.
The podcast grew into a top-charting show with a devoted audience, spawning live tours and a community of listeners who followed Bristowe through relationships, breakups, and reinventions. In 2026, she celebrated the podcast's 1000th episode with a live event in New York City on November 9, a milestone few podcasts ever reach.
Off the Vine gave Bristowe something reality TV never could: ownership. She controls the content, the revenue, and the narrative, and she has used it to become one of the most influential voices in the Bachelor ecosystem.
The Move to New York City
In April 2025, Bristowe announced she was moving from Nashville to New York City, calling the decision "very scary for me" in interviews. She had lived in Nashville for years, building her life and business in Music City.
The move represented a deliberate reinvention: new city, new energy, new opportunities. Bristowe spoke about wanting to challenge herself, expand her media career, and embrace the chaos and creativity of New York.
By 2026, she was settled in the city, hosting the 1000th episode celebration there and leaning into a New York chapter defined by independence and ambition.
Relationships: Jason Tartick and Beyond
After Shawn Booth, Bristowe's most significant relationship was with Jason Tartick, a former Bachelorette contestant she began dating in 2019. They got engaged in 2021 and were together for four years before splitting in 2024.
The breakup was difficult and public, playing out partly on her podcast, where Bristowe was characteristically honest about the pain. Fans rallied around her candor, which turned a heartbreak into some of her most compelling content.
Since then, Bristowe has dated casually and spoken openly about the weirdness of dating as a 41-year-old public figure. Her honesty about modern romance remains one of her most relatable qualities.
Dancing With the Stars and TV Work
In 2020, Bristowe competed on Dancing With the Stars season 29, winning the Mirrorball Trophy with partner Artem Chigvintsev. The victory showcased a different side of her: disciplined, graceful, and determined.
She later co-hosted The Bachelorette alongside Tayshia Adams, bringing an insider's empathy to the role. Though her hosting tenure was brief, it cemented her status as franchise royalty.
These days, her TV appearances are selective, with the podcast and live events taking priority. She has built a career that no longer depends on ABC's approval.
What She's Doing Now
At 41, Kaitlyn Bristowe is living her New York chapter to the fullest. Off the Vine continues to thrive, her live shows sell out, and she remains a sought-after voice on reality TV culture.
She has also launched business ventures, including wine and lifestyle partnerships, leveraging her audience into entrepreneurial success. Her brand is authenticity: the rare reality star who tells the truth about the industry that made her.
A decade after handing out roses, Kaitlyn Bristowe has done what few Bachelor leads manage: she built something that lasts, on her own terms, in her own voice.
The Shawn Booth Engagement
Kaitlyn Bristowe's Bachelorette season ended with her choosing personal trainer Shawn Booth, and their engagement was initially celebrated as a franchise success story. But the relationship crumbled under the pressures of public scrutiny and mismatched lives, ending in 2018 after three years.
Bristowe has been candid about the breakup's pain, describing the difficulty of grieving a relationship in public. The split taught her hard lessons about fame and love that she later shared with podcast listeners.
Booth has largely stayed out of the spotlight since, while Bristowe turned the heartbreak into content and growth, a pattern she would repeat.
Their story remains a cautionary tale about Bachelor engagements: the cameras stop, but real life doesn't.
Business Ventures Beyond Podcasting
Bristowe has diversified beyond Off the Vine into wine partnerships, merchandise, and brand deals, building a business portfolio that leverages her loyal audience.
Her Spade and Sparrows wine label was an early venture, and she continues to collaborate with lifestyle brands that fit her authentic, unfiltered image.
Live podcast tours add significant revenue, with fans paying to see her perform in person. The 1000th episode celebration in New York was both milestone and business event.
At 41, Bristowe is that rare reality star who became a genuine entrepreneur, her business as durable as her personality.
Advocacy and Candor
Bristowe's candor extends to advocacy: she has spoken openly about mental health, therapy, and the psychological toll of reality TV fame, using her platform to normalize seeking help.
She has also been vocal about the Bachelor franchise's treatment of contestants, offering insider critiques that carry weight because she lived it.
Her honesty about cosmetic procedures, dating struggles, and aging in the public eye has made her a relatable voice for millennial women navigating similar issues.
In an industry built on artifice, Kaitlyn Bristowe's truth-telling is her superpower.
Life in Nashville Before New York
For years, Nashville was Kaitlyn Bristowe's home base, the city where she rebuilt her life after reality TV. She bought a house there, built a community of friends, and ran her podcast business from Music City, embracing its creative energy and slower pace.
Nashville's entertainment scene suited her: a city of songwriters and storytellers where authenticity is currency. Bristowe thrived there, hosting friends, recording Off the Vine, and living a life that balanced public persona with private comfort.
But by 2025, she felt the pull of something bigger. In interviews about the move, she described Nashville as wonderful but complete, a chapter she loved that had run its course. The decision to leave was emotional; she had deep roots, close friends, and a comfortable routine.
Her April 2025 announcement that she was moving to New York City, calling it "very scary for me," was classic Bristowe honesty: admitting fear while doing the scary thing anyway. Fans who had followed her Nashville years felt the poignancy of the farewell.
The move also reflected her business ambitions: New York offered media opportunities, live show venues, and a creative density Nashville couldn't match. For a podcaster and personality, the city is the ultimate stage.
She has said the transition was harder and more rewarding than expected, the loneliness of a new city giving way to the exhilaration of reinvention. At 41, she proved it's never too late to start over somewhere new.
Relationship With the Bachelor Franchise
Kaitlyn Bristowe's relationship with Bachelor Nation is complicated: the franchise made her, and she has spent years both celebrating and critiquing it. Her podcast regularly dissects seasons with insider knowledge, praising what works and calling out what doesn't.
She has been vocal about the show's treatment of contestants, particularly women, drawing on her own experiences with producers, editing, and public shaming. Her critiques carry weight because she lived the machine from the inside.
Yet she also credits the franchise with her career, attending events, maintaining friendships with fellow alumni, and never fully burning the bridge. It is a nuanced stance: grateful but clear-eyed.
Her 2020 Dancing With the Stars win and her Bachelorette co-hosting stint kept her in the ABC family, even as her podcast allowed independence. She navigates both worlds skillfully.
As the franchise evolves, Bristowe remains one of its most important voices: the insider who tells the truth, the fan favorite who outgrew the show but never disowned it.
Her legacy in Bachelor Nation is secure not as a contestant who found love, but as a woman who found herself, and then built an empire telling other women to do the same.
Beauty and Wellness Brand
Kaitlyn Bristowe has turned her personal interests into business ventures, most notably in the beauty and wellness space. Her audience, largely millennial women navigating the same life stages, trusts her recommendations on everything from skincare to mental health tools.
Her approach to brand partnerships is selective: she promotes products she genuinely uses, a credibility earned through years of unfiltered podcasting. When Bristowe talks about a wellness routine or a beauty favorite, her listeners know it is real.
The business of being Kaitlyn Bristowe extends to live events, where fans pay to see her podcast recordings in person. These shows, part comedy, part therapy session, part girls' night out, have become a significant revenue stream and a beloved ritual for her community.
She has also ventured into the wine space with Spade and Sparrows, a label that reflected her love of a good glass and her understanding of her audience's tastes. Though the wine industry is competitive, her personal brand gave the venture a running start.
What distinguishes Bristowe's business ventures is their coherence: everything she sells, from podcast tickets to partnerships, feels like an extension of the person fans hear every week. There is no dissonance between the brand and the human.
At 41, she has built something rare in the influencer economy: a business that would survive even if the algorithms changed, because it is founded on a genuine relationship with her audience rather than fleeting virality.
Mental Health Advocacy
One of Kaitlyn Bristowe's most meaningful contributions has been her openness about mental health. She has discussed therapy, anxiety, and the psychological toll of reality television with a candor that was rare when she started and remains refreshing.
Her podcast regularly features conversations about healing, boundaries, and self-worth, topics she explores with the vulnerability of someone who has done the work herself. Listeners frequently credit her with helping them seek therapy or leave bad relationships.
She has been particularly honest about the mental health impact of public scrutiny: the comments, the tabloids, the pressure to maintain an image. By naming these pressures, she demystified them for fans facing their own versions.
Her advocacy extends to normalizing cosmetic procedure transparency, discussing her own choices openly in an industry built on secrecy. This honesty, about both inner and outer work, is her signature.
Bristowe's mental health advocacy is not a brand pillar; it is simply who she is, a woman who learned that talking about hard things makes them easier, and who uses her microphone to prove it.
In a media landscape full of curated perfection, her willingness to be a work in progress is a public service.
Frequently asked questions
What happened to Kaitlyn Bristowe?
Kaitlyn Bristowe hosts the Off the Vine podcast, moved to New York City in 2025, and celebrated her podcast's 1000th episode in 2026.
How old is Kaitlyn Bristowe?
Kaitlyn Bristowe is 41 years old. She was born on June 19, 1985.
Where does Kaitlyn Bristowe live now?
Kaitlyn Bristowe moved from Nashville to New York City in April 2025.
What is Off the Vine?
Off the Vine with Kaitlyn Bristowe is her hit podcast launched in 2017, covering celebrity interviews, dating, and Bachelor Nation.
Who did Kaitlyn Bristowe pick on The Bachelorette?
Kaitlyn Bristowe chose Shawn Booth in The Bachelorette season 11 finale. They split in 2018.
Was Kaitlyn Bristowe on Dancing With the Stars?
Yes. Kaitlyn Bristowe won Dancing With the Stars season 29 in 2020 with Artem Chigvintsev.
Who did Kaitlyn Bristowe date after the show?
Her most notable post-show relationship was with Jason Tartick (2019-2024). She was previously engaged to Shawn Booth.
Sources
- EntertainmentNow - Bristowe NYC moveEntertainmentNow
- Bachelor Nation - NYC moveBachelor Nation
- Kaitlyn Bristowe - WikipediaWikipedia