Matt James clapped back at Bachelor Producer Mike Fleiss after the showrunner shared a photo of the Season 25 star and his ladylove Rachael Kirkconnell on the red carpet at the ESPY Awards.
The tweet was innocuous as Mike posted a snap of the couple looking wonderful and in love together during the sports awards show, held on Saturday, July 10.
In the caption, Mike wrote, “Matt James and Rachael Kirkconnell come out of hiding at ESPY Awards.”
He retweeted a post by TMZ which used the exact wording in their caption that described the couple, who met during the series’ last season and caused waves thereafter when their relationship took a dramatic turn. Rachael’s participation in racially insensitive imagery in college led the Bachelor star to reconsider her as his final pick during a sit down on The Bachelor: After the Final Rose.
The couple found their way back to one another several months later, and their relationship has been steady ever since.
Matt took Mike’s tweet and turned it on its head, posing with Rachael for a tongue-in-cheek photograph where they added their own commentary.
“Ain’t nobody hiding!” Matt wrote, alongside an image of him and Rachael looked directly at the camera, with sunglasses perched down on the tips of their noses. He added a laughing and crying emoji to punctuate his statement.
Matt James and Rachael Kirkconnell are active on social media
Matt James and Rachael Kirkconnell are very acting on social media. The couple regularly posts images where they are out and about in New York City, Matt’s home base.
Rachael shared a slideshow of three images with Instagram, seen below, of the couple all dressed up in attendance at the ESPY Awards on July 12. The event was held at Pier 17 in New York City.
In the caption she called herself the “most unathletic person in the building last night” but one of the most inspired. She and Matt, a former athlete, attended the awards where individual and team athletic achievement and other sports-related performances are recognized during a one-year period of time.
The Bachelor couple is still going strong
After making a promise to work on their relationship moving forward, it appeared Matt’s idea of how to deal with their union and Rachael’s were on two different pages.
“It was honestly a commitment that we made to each other that we were going to work on the relationship,” he explained on the Pomp podcast. He said that Rachael gave him an ultimatum that convinced him to try to repair and renew their love in a different way.
“There came a point in time where it was evident that my working on the relationship looked different than Rachael’s because I wasn’t really honoring that commitment that I made to working on the relationship.”
“She was like, ‘If you’re going to make this work, let’s do it. But, if you’re not going to make it work, I’m going to let you do your own thing.’ That’s really all I needed,” he explained. “It was an ultimatum that I needed. It’s been great.”
The Bachelor is currently on hiatus.