Celebrity Exes
What Happened to ‘Big Brother’s Kat Dunn & Nick Maccarone? A Deep Dive Into Their Split
Kathryn “Kat” Dunn is one of the Big Brother alums who will be returning to CBS to compete on Season 38 of The Amazing Race. The season features former Big Brother stars competing alongside their relatives or significant others, and Kat is teaming up with her boyfriend, Alex Romo.
The last time fans saw Kat on television in 2019, she began a relationship with fellow Season 21 Big Brother contestant Nick Maccarone. So, what happened between then and now? Scroll down for everything we know.
Why did Kat Dunn and Nick Maccarone split?
Kat and Nick began their relationship in the summer of 2019 after they were both evicted from the Big Brother house. While filming the show, he struck up a showmance with Bella Wang. However, she didn’t make the jury, and while Kat and Nick were in the jury house, their relationship began.
By December 2019, they were going strong, although Kat confirmed they were not exclusive. “If he wants to go date someone else I’m, like, have at it, but I don’t think he’s going to,” she said on the Coco Caliente podcast.
But by the time April 2020 rolled around, the relationship had run its course. Kat confirmed the split news to Us Weekly and said that long distance took a toll on the former couple (she lives in Texas, while he’s from New Jersey). She also attributed some of their issues to outside noise from fans, particularly after Kat canceled her planned trip to New Jersey amid travel regulations put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“They were messaging him things like, ‘Oh, you deserve to find someone who really loves you, and she’s just not it.’ You know, just getting involved in our business,” she shared. “It was kind of starting to cause, like, little arguments here and there. Just that, along with the stress of quarantine and everything going on, it was getting a little shaky, I guess.”
Everything blew up, though, when Nick joined Kat’s Instagram Live, and she poked fun at him in front of the hundreds of other fans tuning in. “Regularly, I think that he would have taken the joke in stride, but I think that just like that on top of the fans saying, like, ‘Oh, she doesn’t really like you’ and all the other stuff, I think that it was maybe just like the straw that broke the camel’s back,” she explained, adding that the argument continued in the comments section of the Live. “It was just a little — and I’ll say this cause we’ve talked about it since, so he knows — it was very childish. It was something that shouldn’t have happened, especially on such a public outlet.”
They ended the relationship on the phone after the public drama.
Where do Kat Dunn and Nick Maccarone stand now?
At the time of her Us Weekly interview (two weeks after the breakup), Kat said she and Nick were still on “great terms,” adding, “He’s still one of my best friends. We still talk pretty much every day.”
The two have not talked about the status of their friendship in years, but they have both certainly moved on. Kat has been dating her boyfriend and Amazing Race partner, Alex, a photographer, since 2021.
Meanwhile, Nick and fiancée Heather Bonato, a realtor, welcomed their first child together in October 2021. Another baby followed in February 2024.
Nick popped the question while Heather was pregnant with their second baby. “To one of the happiest days of my life,” he gushed on Instagram. “Words can’t describe the excitement I have that we are going to continue to do life together. To see the growth in our relationship, to see how amazing of a mother you are to Juliana, and how amazing you are to me, I cannot wait to see what the future holds.”
The Amazing Race, Season 38 Premiere, Thursday, September 25, 9/8c, CBS
