It’s been over a year since Martha Kalifatidis met her partner Michael Brunelli on Married At First Sight.
And though the experiment has a notoriously low success rate, it’s seemed to work for the couple, who will celebrate their second anniversary this year.
But in an exclusive chat with Now To Love, Martha admits she wasn’t too invested in the brides and grooms of the 2020 season.
“We watched clips of it because of something I was doing with Channel Nine, but we didn’t watch in depth,” Martha explains.
“I don’t have any bad feelings towards [MAFS], but this season I didn’t connect with anyone in the cast.”
Martha and Michael during their time on MAFS.
(Image: Nine Network)Martha says she did tune into the 2018 season and found the season five contestants more her type.
“I think the girls in there were a little bit more relatable to me, but this year I struggled,” Martha said.
“I really liked Ashley [Irvin], I thought she was so funny because she was in such an awkward situation with Troy – I thought she handled it with humour and she was so chilled, I thought she was hilarious and I would always laugh with her because Troy was really unique.”
Martha also loved Sarah Roza because “she was really giving it everything.”
Ashley and Sarah Roza were Martha’s favourite brides from season five.
(Image: Instagram @ashleyairvin)Martha became a breakout star on her season of MAFS when she tipped a glass of red wine on contestant Cyrell Paule during the final dinner party.
The bombshell confrontation led to Martha striking up a commercial partnership with Channel Nine, sharing her “Red Wine Moments” from this year’s season, and she’s also become an ambassador for liquor chain BWS.
When asked if she thought pouring red wine on somewhere would lead her to where she is today, Martha replied with a resounding “No, absolutely not.”
“That is probably the last thing I thought I would be doing, working with a brand because I love red wine. Funnily enough, the red wine from MAFS was actually a low intervention wine from BWS – how funny!”
WATCH BELOW: Martha throws red wine on Cyrell. Post continues after video…
Martha and Michael are currently living together in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, but like many long-term couples who are living under the same roof, they’ve experienced a range of emotions during lockdown.
“We’ve had our ups and downs,” she says.
“The beginning was fun – we were like ‘Ok this is something different’. Then we reached a stage where we were bored, then we were frustrated, then we went back and were like ‘It’s alright, we don’t mind it, things are getting better,’ and then bored and frustrated. It’s just been up and down.”
“We’ve had our ups and downs.”
(Image: Instagram @marthaa__k)Whilst things are good between the couple, Martha says she’s unsure of their next milestone.
“We don’t have any big plans to be honest. We’re just sort of working away on our own projects,” she says.
“You can’t even put plans in motion right now because everything’s so crazy. Even now that the pandemic is sort of slowly dying out, now all the riots in America are happening – we have not stopped reading the news, we are constantly looking at the news.
“It’s really hard to think about what we can do next, when we should go on our next trip or anything like that right now.”
