Bachelor Nation’s Katie Thurston wasted no time in getting engaged to her husband, Jeff Arcuri, only five months after they got together.
“Our first date was in May [2024 after first connecting in April]. We got engaged in August. Then, in March [of 2025], we eloped in our empty apartment here in New York,” Katie, 35, shared on the Wednesday, September 30, episode of the “Not Married to This” podcast.
Us confirmed in August 2024 that Jeff, 38, popped the question during a romantic stroll along the famed Secret Beach in Kauai, Hawaii. (Katie had previously been engaged to Blake Moynes after giving him the final rose in The Bachelorette’s season 17 finale in August 2021. They ended their engagement two months later.)
Mere weeks after Katie was diagnosed with stage III breast cancer in February 2025, Us exclusively reported that the reality star and her beau exchanged vows in a private backyard ceremony at their home on March 22, 2025. (Katie’s breast cancer later progressed to stage IV and she underwent a double mastectomy in April.)
“Not Married to This” cohost Serena Pitt joked during Wednesday’s interview that Katie was used to “expedited dating experiences” because of her experience on The Bachelorette.
“We’ve just dated so many people that we know what we know now,” Katie highlighted.
She added that being “long distance” with Jeff actually “escalated the relationship” to the point that she decided to move to New York City to be with him.
“[A long-distance relationship] is all so intentional,” she noted. “There’s no intimacy to cloud the judgment. There’s no drinking to cloud the judgment. It’s just lots of FaceTime and texts.”
Katie continued, “At the age we were [at that point], I was 34 … He’s a couple of years older than me. We knew what we wanted. We weren’t looking to date around. We wanted to find our match! They say, ‘When you know, you know’ … That’s the only way to explain it.”
There were some major logistical issues that Katie and Jeff faced when they first moved in together.
Katie Thurston Shuts Down Claim Cancer ‘Rushed’ Her Husband Into Marriage
“His place was too tiny for us,” she recalled. “What was really hard about that was … we had to rent [our new apartment] sight unseen because when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, we were actually on the road about to do the world tour together. I had just turned my keys in to my L.A. apartment.”
The couple had plans to travel to New Zealand, Australia, Japan and Europe until her diagnosis upended it all.
“All of our plans shifted so while we were in Hawaii, our agent had to help find an apartment that we could move into before we were even back in New York,” Katie said. “We got this place without seeing it in person … We got very lucky because we needed something that was going to fit both of us. Otherwise, his apartment was just tiny — a true bachelor pad.”
Jeff exclusively shared with Us in August that Katie’s ongoing cancer treatment has impacted their timeline for potentially expanding their family.
Former Bachelorette Katie Thurston Shuts Down Jeff Arcuri Divorce Rumors
“It has so much more weight to it now because we have the presence of — not death, but something very dark happening — and then, on the other end of that, we’re talking about creating life,” he acknowledged. “So there is a beauty to the contrast of that, I think, and I like to focus on that, on the positives, on what we’re going to be doing.”
Aside from her cancer journey, Katie recently confirmed that she was recovering from a chin liposuction procedure, though she insisted her decision to share her surgery was not an attempt to “influence [followers] to do this or make a statement about what is and isn’t beautiful.”
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