Joan Vassos Says She’s OK With Long-Distance Relationship After ‘Golden Bachelorette’: ‘Could Be Fun’

Joan Vassos doesn't think having a long-distance relationship will be so bad after handing out her final rose on The Golden Bachelorette . Warning: This story contains spoilers about season 1 of The Golden Bachelorette .

“I don’t consider it a negative thing. It could be really fun," Joan, 61, told Us Weekly in an interview published on Wednesday, October 16.

“When I have something great going on, my person could come be with me, and vice versa. We’ll spend two or three weeks with each other every month,” she explained. “I know this sounds aspirational, [but] you can make it work. The logistics shouldn’t be what stops you from being together.”

Show spoiler Reality Steve reported that Joan picks insurance executive and Wichita, Kansas, resident Chock Chapple as her final rose recipient. While Steve still hadn't found out whether or not they got engaged, he reported the pair were still together as of September. Filming wrapped in July when their final rose ceremony took place.

Joan lives in Rockville, Maryland, where she works as a school administrator. Her family, which includes four children and two grandchildren, live in the area and she previously said how moving away was not an option.

"I’ll never leave my family. They are the most important people in the world to me, obviously, and I would expect that to be the same for the person that I end up with because family is so important to me, that would have to be a key part of their personality," Joan told CNN in a May 15 interview, the day after she was named the first Golden Bachelorette.

"You have to be willing to ... travel and be with that person and maybe spend a couple of months or a couple of weeks at a time ... and then maybe eventually, you figure out a destination that would work for you and your families or have another house where everybody gets together," she said of how she hoped the relationship with her final rose recipient would work out.

When Joan appeared on the first season of The Golden Bachelor , she told lead Gerry Turner that there was no way she would relocate from Maryland to Indiana, where he lived as a retiree.

“That was actually the first question that Gerry asked me. We sat down for the first time together and he said, ‘You live in Maryland, I live in Indiana. How do you see something like this working?’ … My answer to him was – and it still is my answer – I think you almost have to live a dual life," she told the network.

Joan famously self-eliminated from Gerry's season in the third episode due to a family emergency back home. She previously revealed to the former restaurateur, 73, that her daughter had given birth shortly before she came on the show. Her daughter was struggling post-partum after undergoing a cesarean section birth, and Joan chose her family over a future with Gerry.

After leaving the show, Joan wrote in an Instagram post, "Once a mom, always a mom and sometimes the timing doesn’t work out with finding love. Everyone at home is doing great and I hope one day I will get the chance at love again," which she did as the first Golden Bachelorette.

Ultimately for Gerry, one of the main reasons his marriage to final rose recipient Theresa Nist ended was because neither were willing to relocate. Theresa, 71, lived and worked in New Jersey, where her family also resided.

"Gerry said he was moving to be with Theresa, which we now know wasn’t true, but this isn’t the first time he’s been caught in a lie,” an insider exclusively told Life & Style in April when the former couple announced they were divorcing after three months of marriage. "Reality set in. Bottom line, Gerry never really had any intention of moving to New Jersey to be with Theresa."