Brooke Blurton and Darvid Garayeli are the first people to admit that they’re disgustingly in love.
Chatting to Now To Love after the Bachelorette finale, where they declared their love for one another, the connection between them is impossible to ignore.
“I wholeheartedly like truly love Darvid,” Brooke gushes, before Darvid chimes in to echo the sentiment.
They laugh before poking fun at how truly smitten they are, uttering a joking “yuck!” together.
Now, four months after filming wrapped, the duo are planning a life together in Melbourne, where Darvid will soon be moving in with Brooke.
“I just wanted to say ‘I love you’ and scream it.”
(Ten)But he admits that when he stepped out of the car on the day the finale was filmed, he had no clue how it was going to go.
“It was such an overwhelming experience. I almost blacked out that day. I had no idea what was going on with Jamie Lee and how her and Brooke’s connection was,” he admits.
And when Brooke started crying at his arrival, he definitely feared the worst, telling us: “For a couple of minutes there I was like, ‘all right, I’m actually about to get my heart broken’.”
Brooke chimes in: “He literally thought I was breaking up with him. Imagine if I did a Honey Badger, oh my God.”
She’s referring to her original season of The Bachelor, in which Nick ‘Honey Badger’ Cummins chose no one in the finale.
But Brooke says there was no chance of her repeating that particular TV moment, as she knew she had found exactly what she was looking for with Darvid.
“I just wanted to say ‘I love you’ and scream it. We were both messes, but it was fantastic,” she says.
“It was like an end to a chapter that we feel so very proud of. I feel very like privileged that we got to show this beautiful little love story playing out.”
It was an emotional ride on the show, but now that the finale has aired Brooke says she can’t wait to put an end to the forced separation and secrecy and do “normal” relationship things.
“I actually just want to be able to smell my boyfriend! That’s going to be the headline now, right?” she laughs.
Everything’s coming up roses for the pair in their personal lives, but on social media there was some unfortunate backlash over the fact that Brooke ended up leaving the show with a man.
As the first queer Bachelorette, many fans hoped to see the 26-year-old partnered up with a woman at the end, someone like runner-up Jamie-Lee.
Brooke says the biphobia she’s seen since the finale aired has been deeply disappointing, explaining that the whole message of her season is that “love is love”.
“I really hate that there has been such a level of biphobia. It’s all about who a person is, not what their gender is,” she says.
“Regardless of who I end up with, what does it matter as long as there’s so much love between us? If Darvid was a girl, I’d still bloody be with him, so it doesn’t really matter what gender he is.”
She adds that while she didn’t feel any pressure to pick someone of a specific gender, she knows people will always “want to have an opinion” and that’s why diverse representation is so important.
“There’s always going to be critics. If I picked a girl, people would still be critical.”
Brooke was also the first Indigenous woman in the leading role, and on-screen conversations between her and Darvid around culture actually inspired some real-life action too.
Social media was flooded last night with people discussing the traditional owners of the land they lived on after Darvid confessed on-screen that he didn’t know who owned the land where he lived.
“It sparked in me [the motivation] to take that responsibility of learning on myself. And I think a lot of people felt the same, so it’s a step in the right direction,” he said.
“There’s always going to be critics. If I picked a girl, people would still be critical.”
(Ten)Brooke adds: “We really need to acknowledge our First Nations people, and to see these conversations play out on a mainstream television show just blows my mind.
“I feel so proud and I feel like they are very authentic conversations that we naturally should be having. I think we’ve come a long way in this show.”
She and Darvid are both hopeful that sharing their cultures on the show will inspire more diversity in reality TV, as well as more conversations around inclusion.
In the meantime, they’re finalising plans to move in together – but how does Darvid’s “wonderful, protective” mum feel about it?
“Mum’s an absolute sweetheart, she’s all for it. She absolutely loves Brooke and thinks that she’s a super wonderful and supportive partner,” he gushes.
Brooke chimes in too, laughing as she insists, “She doesn’t hate me! She literally calls me her daughter.”
To find your own fairytale love story, sign up for eHarmony today!
