Why Tara didn't initially want to tell her family she was engaged to Sam.

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When Sam Cochrane dropped to a single knee on the finale of Bachelor in Paradise to propose to Tara Pavlovic, Tara truly had no idea what was happening. After all, they’d only been dating for four weeks.

“I didn’t have any idea it was happening, it was big surprise,” Tara tells Mamamia. “We did have some casual chats about it in Paradise and at first I was very against the idea, but also, I was so in love with him. He would sometimes say, if I asked you to marry me, would you say yes? And I told him yes.”

She waited for a little while, though, before telling her family.

“I didn’t tell anyone in my family until they met him, I just wanted them to meet him before I told them.

“It was really hard, it was such a long time [keeping it secret]. It was testing. When you get engaged, you want to tell everyone and we just couldn’t. And then Channel 10 put the proposal in all the ads which was really hard. I had no idea they were going to do that. People began asking us if it was us and obviously I am not going to lie to my friends.”

We debrief on all things Bachelor in Paradise on our recap podcast. Post continues after.

She says the hardest part, for them, outside the bubble that is reality TV was adapting to the fact they didn’t do everything together all the time.

“I guess [the hardest thing] was not being able be together and do stuff together all the time – it was a big change. In paradise we were free to do whatever, and we didn’t have to hide and suddenly we came home and we had to be house bound.”

Contrary to some reports, Sam has not moved to Gold Coast and Tara hasn’t moved to Sydney. They are, she says, “working on that”.

Of course, she was a little hesitant to tell her family about the engagement initially for other reasons, too.

“Initially, I didn’t want to tell my family and friends about the engagement straight away, because I didn’t want them to have a pre conceived idea about him like I did and be automatically against it. But he came out so well in this and it shows what a different environment can actually do.”

Sam picked the ring with no guidance, no hints and no real idea. But, she says, he nailed it.

“He picked it all by himself and it’s exactly what I wanted in an engagement ring. I didn’t give him any tips, he just guessed. Sammy is very in tune with me.”

And as for that old televised wedding chestnut? She isn’t ruling it out.

“A lot of people are asking us this and to be honest, we haven’t put much thought into it. We are getting bombarded with the most beautiful support from everyone through our socials and it has been really overwhelming. We have come this far by doing things publicly, so maybe it is an option. But you know, that’s something we have to think about.”