On Tuesday morning, just a day after they declared their love for one another on national television, Keira and Jarrod did a mysterious thing.
As the news cycle went into overdrive, Bachelor in Paradise news saturating the landscape in which we read, the couple refused to be a part of it. While their fellow contestants were well on the publicity train, doing interviews with every major news outlet in the country, a curiously silent Keira and Jarrod drew intrigue from some of their most loyal fans.
After all, the last time media appearances were cancelled a day after a finale without warning or context was the great big Blake Garvey Bachelor Bungle of 2014. And, well, we know how that ended.
So where in the world were they?
“We were just so overwhelmed by it all, the build up just really overwhelmed us,” Keira tells Mamamia. “Every week throughout the series we were doing interviews and together, we just weren’t in the best mindset. We really didn’t want to do anything in the media when we weren’t in a great mindset and we needed a few days off and to be feeling good before we did anything.”
Watching the show back, she says, takes its toll. Not just individually, but on you as a couple, too.
“One hundred per cent, watching it back, takes a toll on your relationship. We would remember little things and then we would get involved about it again and remember all the hard times involved. All through the show aired, those things can have a negative effect on your relationship and we didn’t do anything about it as it went on because we were so busy. So after the show aired, we thought let’s take this day and appreciate the relationship we have and get ourselves in a better place.”
She tells Mamamia the two are absolutely “still together and stronger than ever”. As has been reported, Keira has relocated to Melbourne to live in Brighton with Jarrod. He spends Monday to Friday at the farm, so the two get to hang out on the weekends and occasionally, she says, she goes mid-week and visits him on the farm.
We debrief on the HECTIC finale of Bachelor in Paradise, on our recap podcast.
Despite the fact she says watching the show back took a “toll” on their relationship, Keira does admit it was “frustrating” watching them being portrayed as the couple who kept breaking up.
“It’s hard watching back because you do know how things happened.
“Jarrod and I – I always knew where I stood with him and how I felt about him and I told him that the whole time. I said, ‘Listen, I am not your girlfriend, but I am not breaking up with you’. Everyone kept saying, ‘Oh, they keep breaking up’. But how do you break up with someone you’re not even dating? That frustrated me, but at the end of the day, I did know they were trying to make a show.
“I knew that I liked him all along, I just didn’t want to get carried away and get caught up in it because it can get really full on.”
She is frank – refreshingly so – in acknowledging her overriding reason for going on the show was because she knew it would open doors for her career-wise.
“For me, it wasn’t necessarily like I knew what I wanted to do and exactly where I wanted it to take me, but it’s definitely a business decision to go on that show and risk what you’re about to be portrayed as.
“I had three rules before going on the show: I wanted to kiss a boy, I wanted Australia to see me in a more positive way and I wanted to come home single.”
Of course, by the time she left the show, she wasn’t single at all. Keeping that relationship under wraps for six months, she says, was “one of the most challenging experiences [she has] gone through”.
“It was so hard, I think it was the most challenging experience that I have gone through. It’s really hard to explain it – we have just met each other in unusual circumstances, and then when we start our relationship, we would always be on house arrest. We couldn’t do anything except be indoors. We couldn’t go for a walk and get coffee, we couldn’t get dinner.
“I reckon my Uber eats bill went through the roof.”
Right now, the two have no immediate plans to get married. Everyone needs to “calm down”, they are more interested in going to get some breakfast first. Try the “normal life” thing.
Oh, and as for that rumoured reality show about the two? Don’t rule it out.
“The people want it, so maybe we should give them what they want,” she joked. “Nah, every second person say they miss us on the screens and are really invested in us, so if the opportunity comes up, we will definitely do it.”