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What Happened to ‘Bachelorette’ Season 3 Lead Jen Schefft? Her Finale Explained & Life Today
It’s hard to believe, but it’s been 20 years since Jen Schefft graced our television screens on Season 3 of The Bachelorette.
Fans fell in love with Schefft on Season 3 of The Bachelor in 2003. She got engaged to Andrew Firestone on the show, but they split in December 2003 after about a year together. Following the breakup, Schefft returned to the franchise as The Bachelorette lead in 2005.
The 20-year anniversary of the Season 3 finale is later this month, so Swooon is looking back at what happened, including who Schefft picked and whether they’re still together today.
Who did Jen Schefft pick on The Bachelorette?
During the Season 3 finale, Schefft chose Jerry Ferris over John Paul Merritt. Ferris popped the question, but Schefft wasn’t quite ready for another fast engagement. “I’m sorry I’m not somebody who just takes a leap of faith and goes with the moment,” she cried in a confessional. “But I did that before and it f**ked me.”
The footage then cut to a live rose ceremony at After the Final Rose, where Ferris was waiting to see if Schefft was ready to accept his proposal. Months had gone by between filming and the live show, and Schefft wound up rejecting Ferris too. “This is so awkward and awful,” she admitted.
Donna Svennevik/ABC
Although Schefft received backlash for how the finale played out, Ferris did not slander her on stage. An incredibly awkward interview with then-host Chris Harrison followed the breakup.
“You go on the show to find love, but I didn’t, and so I wanted to be true to who I was and to what really happened,” she told News 5 Cleveland in 2020. “And so the fact that people were so mad about it, that did shock me a lot.”
Where is Jen Schefft today?
Since her time on the reality dating show, Schefft has mostly retreated from the public eye. She now lives in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio, and is married to Joe Waterman. They share two daughters.
Schefft and her husband met on a blind date while she was living in Chicago. They eventually relocated to Ohio. When her daughters were young, Schefft was a stay-at-home mom, but she eventually took a public relations/marketing job at a medical spa in 2020.
Still, Schefft is somewhat connected to her time in Bachelor Nation, as she hosts a podcast called From the Bachelor to the Burbs.
Where is Jerry Ferris today?
Today, Ferris is married to Natasha Goss, an actress, and they share a son named Asher. He met his now-wife about a year after his Bachelorette tenure. They crossed paths at Dominick’s in West Hollywood, where she was working as a waitress while pursuing her acting career.
Goss had watched the show and thought Ferris was “hot,” so she made sure to snag him a table in the crowded restaurant. “If it wasn’t for the show and for my friend asking me to go out and picking that restaurant, I don’t know what my life would be like now,” Ferris admitted in 2016. Ferris works in real estate.
