Golden Bachelor's April Reflects on Past Drama With Kathy: 'Broke My Heart'

One success story from season 10 of Bachelor in Paradise? An ASKN friendship reunion.

After bonding on season 1 of The Golden Bachelor, April Kirkwood, Susan Noles, Kathy Swarts and Nancy Hulkower sparked speculation that they had a falling out when April, 67, was noticeably missing from the group trip to St. Martin in January 2024. While April told Us Weekly that she went on BiP to find love — “I really am lonely and I’m always looking to improve myself. So I thought, ‘What is this gonna bring to me?’” — she also wanted to see Kathy, 72.

“That was important to me, and it meant a lot to me,” she told Us on Wednesday, July 23, detailing their reunion on the beaches of Costa Rica. “She was waiting in the corner. I came up, I hugged her. I said, ‘I love you.’ When you decide to be someone’s friend, you make that mental decision. We’re all a little crazy. We take our highs, we take our lows. I can handle this. And I made a commitment and I told her this, ‘I’m gonna love you forever.’”

The two women now talk on the phone “every day.”

“I really adore her. I know a lot about her and we spent a lot of private time together. She’s a lovely woman. She’s so funny,” April said.

Of the previous distance between April and the other three women of ASKN, April told Us: “It broke my heart.”

“When you’re not in the spotlight and then you become in the spotlight, it changes your chemistry and your brain,” she said. “ It is kind of flaky. I think you’ve probably heard that interviewing other young starlets who really made it big and they’re like, ‘God, this is weird.’ We were all a little bit weirded out and people just needed their space to find who they were. Now we’re all good and we love each other more so than we ever did before. I’m blessed.”

On BiP season 10, April left her castmates speechless when she gave her rose to Jonathon Johnson — instead of one of the Golden Bachelorette men. Kathy subsequently joked about April living in “cougartown.”

“[Kathy] called me right after, said, ‘Please, you’re not mad at me?’ I go, ‘No, no,’” April told Us of the remark.

As for being considered a “cougar,” April — who really gave Jonathon a rose so he could have a second shot at finding a connection on the show — noted: “I think the soul is ageless. Say I met someone 85 and he was hot and gorgeous and I loved him and he touched my soul. … I would rather have a couple minutes of something spectacular than a lifetime of nothing great.”

Bachelor in Paradise airs on ABC Mondays at 8 p.m. ET and starts streaming the next day on Hulu.