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Warning: The Perfect Match season 1 spoilers ahead. As the only couple to stay together since day one, it’s understandable why fans are asking: Are Joey and Kariselle still together from The Perfect Match season 1 and where are they now after filming ended and their engagement in the finale?
Joey Sasso, a contestant from The Circle season 1, and Kariselle Snow, a contestant from Sexy Beasts season 1, were two cast members on season 1 of The Perfect Match, a Netflix reality TV dating show hosted by Nick Lachey (who also hosts Love Is Blind and The Ultimatum). The series sees former contestants from Netflix reality TV shows—including Love Is Blind, Too Hot to Handle, The Circle, The Ultimatum and The Mole—move into a villa in a tropical location, where they date each other in the hopes of finding their perfect match. Each week, contestants who don’t have a match are eliminated as new contestants arrive at the villa to try to break up couples and find a match of their own. In the end, the couple voted by the eliminated contestants as the perfect match are named the winners and receive a cash prize.
“It’s a show full of love and drama and conflict and strategy and gameplay,” The Perfect Match executive producer Chris Coelen told The Hollywood Reporter in February 2023. “Different people come in with different motivations; different people come in with different emotional baggage. There’s certainly no stated intent in this show that there is a specific goal. It’s very reflective of where they are in their lives, and they might just be looking for somebody to spend the summer with, or have a fling with — or maybe they are looking for someone who’s a life partner. It’s really up to them to figure out what their own perfect match is.”
He continued, “Obviously, Valentine’s Day is a holiday that’s rife with symbolism about love. We’re all into the new year, and we’re thinking about our lives and our partners, or lack of partners. These shows are incredibly enjoyable at any time of the year, but I love that we get to see a show like Perfect Match come out on Valentine’s Day.”
But back to Joey and Kariselle. So…are Joey and Kariselle still together from The Perfect Match season 1? Read on for what we know about if Joey and Kariselle are still together from The Perfect Match season 1 and where they are now since filming ended.
Image: Courtesy of Netflix.
Are Joey and Kariselle still together from The Perfect Match season 1? The answer is no. Joey and Kariselle were one of five couples in The Perfect Match season 1 finale, along with Dom (The Mole season 1) and Georgia (Too Hot to Handle season 3); Chloe (Too Hot to Handle season 1 and The Circle season 2) and Shayne (Love Is Blind season 2); Bartise (Love Is Blind season 3) and Izzy (Too Hot to Handle season 3); and Nick (The Circle season 1) and LC (Love Is Blind season 1.) Joey and Kariselle also got engaged in The Perfect Match season 1 finale after Joey proposed to Kariselle on their last date. “You’ve been my perfect match since the day I met you. I love waking up to you every single day, and I don’t want that to ever end. I want to ask you: Will you marry me?” Joey told Kariselle in his proposal. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and there is no person that I wanna go through life with, besides you.”
So…are Joey and Kariselle still together? The answer is no. Joey and Kariselle confirmed they broke up after The Perfect Match season 1 finished filming in an interview with Today in March 2023. “We both sort of agreed right now we need to step away from each other. That’s for the best, but her and I have so much love for each other,” Joey said. Joey explained that he and Kariselle broke up after they returned to the real world. “When I was there, I was like, ‘This is the perfect person I want to spend the rest of my life with.’ When you finish filming, you go back to reality. There’s a lot of life things to deal with,” he said. He continued, “We have been such good friends for such a long time. And as of right now we’re really working on repairing the friendship before anything else.” Still, Joey told Today that he didn’t regret his relationship with Kariselle. “I feel good that since we’ve wrapped the show there hasn’t been any times I’ve been laying in bed going, ‘Why do I say that? Why’d I do that?’” he said. “We took a plunge and it was a great experience.”
As of writing this, Joey and Kariselle still follow each other on Instagram and have tagged each other in posts about The Perfect Match. In February 2023, Kariselle commented on an Instagram video of Joey asking people in Times Square, New York, to be his groupie after the show’s Times Square billboard was revealed. “I’m sorry do you forget how we met . . . absolutely iconic,” Kariselle commented with laughing-crying and raised hands emojis. Fans also claimed they saw Kariselle in Joey’s video. “If I’m not mistaken I see [Kariselle] in the reflection of joeys glasses,” one user commented. That same month, Joey posted an Instagram photo joking that he created an OnlyFans account, to which Kariselle commented, “No fcken way.” Joey responded to Kariselle’s comment with two eyes and laughing-crying emojis.
Why did Joey and Kariselle break up after The Perfect Match season 1? In an interview with Tudum in March 2023, Joey explained living in “different places” was the main reason why he and Kariselle split. “You live in different places, you’re trying to get on the same page with each other,” he said, calling their relationship on the show “perfect.” “I think that both of us really respected each other enough to be able to walk away from the situation and really give each other time, distance, space.” He continued, “We love very hard, so the highs are high, and the lows can be very low. At this point, we just know that we’re probably better apart, but that we really want to try to work on our friendship.”
Joey also told Variety in March 2023 that he and Kariselle “tried to do everything” to stay together before deciding to break up. “Relationships in general are extremely difficult and it’s hard to sit here and say exactly what happened because it’s extremely personal between the both of us,” he said. “We have so much in common, but I just think that we really tried to do everything we could to work on everything. We both had the best of intentions, but we have a lot of differences that separate us with the things that we want and the way that we feel about each other… That chapter of my life is over.”
Joey, who called himself a “work in progress,” also responded to viewers who speculated that his and Kariselle’s relationship was fake for The Perfect Match. “Not being together shows how real it was because, let’s just be completely honest, if we were going to fake it, this would be the time to fake it — while the show’s airing,” he said. “If you look at shows like The Bachelor, it’s not a coincidence that everyone’s engaged, happy and in love, and then six months after the show, every single one breaks up or ends their engagement. I’m not a person who’s going to fake something for a show. I just always try to lead with my best foot forward.”
Joey also confirmed that he and Kariselle have a cordial relationship and share “the same attitude toward each other.” “When you watch the show, you can see we’re both very high strung type of people — when things are good, they’re good; when they’re not good, they’re not good,” he said. “I never went out of my way to ever try and hurt somebody. Sometimes when you’re in a new relationship with someone, it feels great. Sometimes you come down from that and it isn’t it for you. All I can ever try to do is be honest about that.”
When asked about his relationship now, Joey told Variety, “No comment. I have have dated. I have talked to people. I have had those experiences, but I just don’t want to put that out there for the world.”
Image: Courtesy of Netflix.
Who is Joey from The Perfect Match season 1? Joey Sasso is a 29-year-old from Rochester, New York. He was originally a contestant on The Circle season 1, which he played as himself and won.
Image: Courtesy of Netflix.
Who is Kariselle from The Perfect Match season 1? Kariselle Snow is a 27-year-old from East Hanover, New Jersey. She was originally a contestant on Sexy Beasts season 1, where she dressed as a panda.
Image: Ser Baffo/Netflix.
Who is The Perfect Match host? The Perfect Match season 1 host is Nick Lachey, who also hosts Netflix reality TV dating shows Love Is Blind and The Ultimatum: Marry or Move On with his wife, Vanessa Lachey. Nick was the lead singer of the boy band 98 Degrees from 1996 to 2012. The group reunited in 2012 and are still together. Nick has also released four solo alums: SoulO, What’s Left of Me, A Father’s Lullaby and Soundtrack of My Life. He was married to Jessica Simpson from 2002 to 2006, and the two also starred in their own reality show, Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica on MTV, from 2003 to 2005. Nick is also the winner of season 5 of The Masked Singer during which he performed as the character “Piglet.”
In an interview with Distractify in March 2022, Nick explained that he and Vanessa wanted to host Love Is Blind because of how their own relationship was long distance when they first started dating. “When Netflix approached us with Love is Blind all those years ago, we jumped at the opportunity because the show really spoke to us personally,” Nick said. “When we first started dating, Vanessa was in New York and I was in Los Angeles. We didn’t get to see each other a lot so we had a lot of long phone conversations, learning everything we possibly could about each other.” He continued, “[Those conversations were] really important for building our relationship and knowing we wanted the same things before there were external pressures on the relationship.” Nick also told Distractify that he and Vanessa want contestants to “fall in love for the right reasons and then introduce everything else.”
Nick also told People in 2022 about how he thinks Love Is Blind would’ve worked for him and Vanessa if they had met in The Pods. “We’ve thought about that, often. And I really, I’m not just saying this for the benefit of this show, I think we would’ve,” he said. “We have the same birthday, we have the same passions, we have the same interests, we have the same drive. Things that motivated us.” Vanessa asked “You would’ve found me through a wall?” to which Nick responded, “I would find you anywhere.” He continued, “I really do think we would’ve found each other. I think we would’ve gravitated to each other. That’s what we did in life. Obviously, we knew each other.” Vanessa added, “We did. We had to find our journey to get to each other.”
Nick also claimed to Us Weekly in 2022 that he would’ve joined Love Is Blind if he was single. “I would. I mean, it’s fascinating,” he said. “Especially having seen the success of season 1 and seeing two loving couples still married to this day? If I watched that and I was looking for love, why wouldn’t you wanna be a part of that? You know, it’s proven to work!” He added, “This dating world is not one I ever was part of — this very superficial ‘swipe left.’ There’s so much judgment and you can Google everybody. I’m not from that era.”
The Perfect Match is available to stream on Netflix.
Image: Courtesy of Gallery Book.
For more about Love Is Blind, read Cameron Hamilton and Lauren Speed’s 2021 book, Leap of Faith: Finding Love the Modern Way. In the book, Cameron and Lauren, who were one of two couples to marry from Love Is Blind season 1, share their “engaging and accessible love advice for the modern world” and reveal exclusive behind-the-scenes details from the Netflix series and what went down in The Pods that viewers didn’t see. The book is told from Cameron and Lauren’s alternating points of view as the fan-favorite couple dishes on what it was really like to marry a “faceless stranger” on television and opens up about how their relationship shifted—”for better and for worse”—once cameras stopped rolling and Lauren and Cameron’s relationship continued in the real world. Leap of Faith: Finding Love the Modern Way is a must-read for any Love Is Blind fan.
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