Ben Grunewald-Brydie had only just laid eyes on Nicole Stevens – literally, only just – when he asked her to marry him. Even more astonishingly, perhaps, she accepted his proposal immediately and they tied the knot a mere four weeks later.
Yes, this was the culmination of a reality TV show – in this case, Netflix‘s Love Is Blind UK – and yet, surely against all the odds, the union has survived.
Two years later, despite the emergence of opposing traits like scattiness (Nicole) and being a stickler for punctuality (Ben), neither has a single regret.
‘Before the show, I’d never have dreamed of marrying a man I’d only just met,’ says Nicole, 31, a marketing director. ‘In the early days of married life, I constantly wondered: ‘How have I gone from not knowing this man to him being my husband, someone I have to be accountable to (and him to me), in the space of a few weeks?’
‘It was mind-blowing. But, luckily, it turns out my instincts were correct. Ben really has turned out to be the man I want to spend the rest of my days with.’
Ben, 35, a freelance drone operator and structural landscaper, agrees wholeheartedly: ‘I love Nicole, she’s everything I could have wished for in a wife,’ he says. ‘Our route to marriage may have been unconventional, but I feel incredibly lucky we found each other.’
And jolly good for them, of course. However, most of us would consider marrying someone we had only just met utterly idiotic.
As a second series of Love Is Blind UK gets under way – with 30 singletons looking to emulate Ben and Nicole’s success – what is it that makes young people open to the idea of a marriage based not on physical attraction – initially at least – but on emotional and intellectual compatibility alone?
Ben Grunewald-Brydie and Nicole Stevens pictured together after appearing on Love Is Blind UK
Ben had only just laid eyes on Nicole for the first time when he asked her to marry him
Is it that Love Is Blind – and C4’s similar offering Married At First Sight – offer a welcome antidote to modern dating, with its relentless swiping based on looks and seemingly limitless choice? Are young people so tired of the modern dating merry-go-round, they’d rather hand everything over to TV ‘experts’, even if it means going through those excruciating first dates in front of a potential audience of millions?
On Love Is Blind, a group of men and women ‘date’ over ten days, speaking to one another from specially built pods, separated by a translucent wall so they can get a sense of the person on the other side, but no visual detail.
The participants start by ‘speed dating’ and can then opt for longer dates with anyone who arouses their interest. They can eventually propose marriage: if the other accepts, they meet face to face, then head to a couples’ retreat for a week to get to know one another and become intimate.
So, far from staring into each other’s eyes over candlelit dinners, Ben and Nicole’s courtship was conducted over two weeks – in August 2023, though they appeared on last year’s series – while seated in separate areas with no means of seeing each other. As the cameras rolled, they exchanged confidences from their respective pods, sharing everything from their childhoods to their ambitions for the future.
‘We talked about attitudes to religion, money, travel, having children,’ says Ben. ‘We built an emotional, spiritual and mental connection, without actually seeing one another at all.
‘It’s the polar opposite of meeting someone on dating apps, which I’ve always found shallow.’ The apps encourage a ‘grass is always greener’ attitude – indeed, that is their model – which stops you getting to know someone in depth, he says. ‘Everything is based on appearance, leaving you wondering if the next person might be a bit better-looking.’
Of course Love Is Blind is a game, too, and the singletons got the chance to speak to other contestants during a specially arranged fortnight in Stockholm, Sweden.
Rather awkwardly, Ben was not Nicole’s first choice of potential spouse. That honour went to Sam Klein, a product design manager whose proposal she accepted but quickly regretted once they met.
Far from staring into each other’s eyes over candlelit dinners, Ben and Nicole’s courtship was with them both seated in separate areas with no means of seeing each other
Rather awkwardly, Ben was not Nicole’s first choice of potential spouse
The nuptials were called off, and though neither Ben nor Nicole want to dwell on him – he is a bit-part player in their love story, after all – her biggest concern seems to have been that he was seeking fame rather than lasting love.
By then, Ben had returned to his home in Preston, Lancashire, having failed to match with anyone – but now Nicole, from Surrey, realised he was her actual true love. The producers of the show, hosted by husband and wife presenters Emma and Matt Willis, hurriedly organised a face-to-face meeting between the two in a pub in London.
When Ben, delighted for a second chance, got down on one knee, Nicole excitedly accepted.
If that plot twist seems to suggest meeting in the flesh does make a difference – and a big one – the two-year length of Nicole and Ben’s relationship at least shows that making a non-sexual connection first provides a good foundation for lasting love.
When I meet them, it’s clear physical attraction is very much present. During our interview, the pair struggle to keep their hands off each other, nuzzling, teasing and cringing when talking about their early intimacies, like a couple still in the first flush of love.
Indeed, during the four weeks between proposal and wedding day, the newly engaged couple went to a spa in Corfu (something Nicole had refused to do with Sam) to see if they did have that crucial physical spark. ‘Ben was very respectful,’ says Nicole now. ‘I never felt coerced, he always allowed me to take the lead.’
Two weeks later, they moved into an apartment complex in London to get a taste of living together as a couple.
The day of reckoning came after that, as they stood in all their wedding finery in front of 20 relatives and close friends, at Wynyard Hall in Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham, and decided whether to commit for life to someone they had first laid eyes on just weeks earlier. The answer was yes.
Hosts Matt Willis and Emma Willis pictured at the the ‘Love is Blind: UK’ Special Screening
Nicole in her wedding dress for the season finale of Love is Blind season one
If the wedding was unconventional so, too, was the first year of the marriage. The terms of a non-disclosure agreement with Netflix meant they had to keep it a secret from everyone except those who had attended the wedding.
In practice, that meant spending only weekends together, when Ben would pretend to visit a friend in London but instead travel down to Surrey and stay in Nicole’s flat.
In fact, once the show aired and the cat was out of the bag, some within their circles were unhappy at having been kept in the dark. ‘It hindered some relations,’ says Ben, cryptically. ‘However, once they met Nicole, everyone said: ‘Oh yeah, brilliant. Well done, you.’ Their upset was more about the process, I think – the fact that we couldn’t say anything.’
Nicole’s parents are both mixed-heritage, Ghanaian and Lebanese, and some of her aunts and uncles were also ‘quite cross’ about the subterfuge.
While Ben’s parents – his mum a retired church minister and his dad a retired theology, philosophy and ethics lecturer – ‘weren’t exactly on board’ with his plans to take part in the show, Nicole’s had little idea of its premise and did not know it could lead to marriage.
When a producer from the show called to say their daughter was engaged, her father – who heads an international construction company – replied: ‘What?!’
‘I thought it best not to say anything, until I knew I’d met someone I was serious about,’ says Nicole, laughing a little uncomfortably. They got to meet one another’s parents before the big day, over meals filmed by the crew, and Ben was ‘relieved’ to get Nicole’s father’s blessing.
But why decide to do the show at all? Neither would be short of suitors in real life, you feel.
Nicole Stevens at the Netflix Love is Blind: UK Season 1 Grand Finale screening
The cast of Love is Blind season one including Nicole Stevens (front centre)
Both are highly educated – Nicole is a maths and economics graduate; Ben has a law degree – and both come from Catholic backgrounds, raised to believe marriage is a serious, lifelong commitment. Ben, it turns out, was contacted over Instagram by a producer and invited to sign up for the show. Other than the odd brief relationship, he’d prioritised travel over settling down and had been single for ten years.
Nicole, on the other hand, had been married before – to a man she dated for five years beforehand, but divorced in 2020 after two years of marriage – and was persuaded to apply by a friend.
‘I was quite devout back then and my first husband and I waited until we were married to be intimate,’ she says now. ‘When the marriage didn’t work out – we were both too immature, I think – I lost some of my faith.’ Nicole had three, albeit brief, relationships in the years that followed, two with men she met on a dating app. However, deciding to marry a man she’d just met in the flesh, on a reality TV show, seems a great leap for such a previously conventional young woman.
‘I was looking for someone who wanted to commit, and who was aware of what that would entail,’ she says. ‘But also, having lived quite a sheltered life, I felt excited about having a partner who’s a bit more adventurous and worldly.’
Ben was also, by then, looking to settle down. And the delicate process of learning to accommodate one another’s quirks began.
The biggest clashes were around Nicole’s ‘time blindness’, which means she’s often late – a particular issue as Ben always likes to be early – and her habit of forgetting where she’s put things.
‘At first I found that difficult because I’m pretty organised,’ says Ben. ‘But instead of just getting frustrated, I’d do things like hang a hook by the door for Nic’s keys, though it’s usually me who remembers to put them there.’
He questioned, gently, whether his wife might have ADHD, a condition she has since been tested for and diagnosed with.
Nicole is a maths and economics graduate, Ben has a law degree and both come from Catholic backgrounds
For her part, Nicole initially resisted Ben’s more rigorous approach – the way he set timers counting down to when they need to leave home, for example – but has now decided to embrace it.
‘I’ve found that having a routine really does help me,’ she says. ‘Planning what we’re going to do, in some detail, is actually useful.’
Despite becoming engaged within minutes of seeing each other, the wedding itself was not a foregone conclusion, they admit. In fact, the evening before, they both agreed not to go through with it, but to see how their relationship evolved back in the real world instead.
‘One of my friends asked whether, if the show was cancelled, we’d still go ahead and we both agreed that without the cameras we wouldn’t rush into it,’ says Ben. ‘Our hearts may have been telling us to ‘Do it’, but our heads were saying: ‘This is bonkers’.’
Later that night, however, while listening to a voice note from Ben – ‘Whatever happens tomorrow, we will definitely be together’ – Nicole had a change of heart, deciding that, as he really was the love of her life: ‘Why bother waiting?’
Meanwhile, Ben stayed awake ruminating until 5.30am before concluding that he wanted to follow his heart, not his head, and marry this ‘wonderful woman’.
While they were allowed no prior contact, neither had any doubts, when the ceremony began, about their dual intention to say ‘I do’.
Two other couples from the show also tied the knot that day and, while one couple is still together, the other split soon afterwards and is in the process of having their marriage, all conducted by official celebrants and legally binding, annulled.
Both Nicole and Ben didn’t have any doubts whether they would say ‘I do’ at the end of the series
While Ben and Nicole are ‘hugely grateful’ for the experience, they agree that a downside to having played out their love affair so publicly is the number of people who believe they now have a right to share their opinion on it.
‘We were on a cruise and a man, another passenger, said to Ben: ‘You’re the guy she didn’t pick’, says Nicole. ‘I was so cross that, when Ben went for a nap later, I went back downstairs and said: ‘Please don’t speak to my husband like that.’
Ben also finds this aspect of reality fame difficult to navigate.
‘At the Baftas, [where the show was nominated for an award], so many people felt free to talk about how we conducted our relationship and what we could have done differently,’ he says. ‘By all means comment, but please do remember that we are now a happily married couple.’
While Nicole signed up for the show saying she wasn’t interested in having children – the result, she says, of seeing her mum coping with raising her sister and her alone while their dad travelled extensively for work – parenthood is now definitely on the couple’s agenda.
‘We’ve been married for nearly two years but that’s also been like our courtship,’ says Ben. ‘We don’t want to rush into having kids just yet, but when we do, I’d like two or three.’
‘Two or three?’ asks Nicole, wide-eyed. ‘I was thinking of one.’
Clearly both still have things to learn about their spouse.
Of course Love Is Blind is still a thoroughly odd concept. No one thinks it’s really a good idea to marry someone within weeks of meeting them.
Yet there’s something about rebalancing the priorities of modern dating – from its online focus on body image and beauty standards back towards real-world emotional connection – that is surely a good thing.
Getting to know someone away from the pressure to look perfect is probably a better way to find out if they’re The One than flicking through snaps of them in swimwear. Let’s hope Ben and Nicole prove that theory right – I think they will.
- Love is Blind: The Reunion and Love Is Blind UK series two are out now on Netflix.
