The Bachelor alum Kendall Long has announced she is engaged to her boyfriend Mitchell Sage.
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Kendall, 31, took to Instagram on Tuesday to share the big news that she’s going to be a bride.
RELATED LINK: ‘THE BACHELOR’ FRANCHISE COUPLES NOW: WHO IS STILL TOGETHER?? (PHOTOS)
“We’re engaged!!” Kendall captioned a photo of the couple kissing and embracing after the marriage proposal.
“It’s always been a HECK YES with you Mitch. I love your brain, I love your family, I pretty much just love every single thing about you! So incredibly over the moon that we get to start our epic adventure together in a new country.”
Kendall announced in late October that she’s moving to Germany with Mitch after repeatedly refusing to even give Chicago a chance with her ex-boyfriend Joe Amabile, which resulted in the former Bachelor in Paradise couple splitting up.
Kendall continued in her Instagram post, “I’ve heard love explained to me by my parents and was scared I would never experience something so wonderful. But with you, love is so much better than I could have ever imagined it to be.”
“I feel so lucky and I can’t wait to officially be a Sagely,” she concluded.
Congratulatory comments poured in from Bachelor Nation alums such as Clare Crawley, Blake Horstmann, Susie Evans, Raven Gates, and Dean Unglert.
Season 14 The Bachelorette star Becca Kufrin, for example, gushed, “YAY!!!!!! Omg crying the happiest of tears, biggest congrats to you two.”
And Bachelor in Paradise alum Ashley Iaconetti wrote, “This is the best news!!! Congratulations!! Couldn’t be happier for you!! You two are the perfect match!”
RELATED LINK: ‘THE BACHELORETTE’ COUPLES NOW: WHOM DID ‘THE BACHELORETTE’ STARS AND THEIR BACHELOR PICKS ULTIMATELY END UP WITH?! (PHOTOS)
This past summer, Kendall and Mitch traveled around Europe together, beginning with a stop in Ireland.
Kendall, who appeared on Arie Luyendyk Jr.’s season of The Bachelor followed by multiple seasons of Bachelor in Paradise, and Mitch, an aerospace engineer, met through mutual friends in December 2021.
The pair started dating in February 2022 and then Mitch asked Kendall to be his girlfriend on Valentine’s Day in February 2022.
However, Kendall didn’t go Instagram official with Mitch until April, when she knew she was sure about him.
“By the way, I’m in love,” Kendall gushed on Instagram when publicly announcing her relationship. “And just like our relationship, these pictures get progressively weirder.”
One month later, Kendall admitted she used to be a commitment-phobe but appearing on The Bachelor franchise taught her a lot about “wanting marriage.”
“Right now with Mitch, I feel like [an engagement] is the direction that we are headed and I’m comfortable with that and I’m excited about that,” Kendall shared during a May appearance on Us Weekly’s “Here for the Right Reasons” podcast.
Kendall said picturing Mitch as her husband didn’t scare her at all.
“It’s crazy to be in a relationship where you’re like, ‘Oh wow. I can see it with this person and not be terrified,'” she shared.
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“So I think the show has definitely taught me a lot about what I’m looking for in a relationship and looking forward to that next step with somebody.”
Ultimately, Kendall said being on The Bachelor and Bachelor in Paradise’s fifth and seventh seasons taught her what she’s “looking for in a relationship.”
And she noted in the Spring, “I feel really confident about our relationship currently and where we’re going. And I feel confident in him as a person.”
Prior to meeting Mitch, Kendall had dated Joe, a The Bachelorette alum and former Dancing with the Stars contestant, for nearly two years.
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Kendall and Joe fell in love on Bachelor in Paradise’s fifth season in 2018. The pair moved in together in Los Angeles in April 2019 but then broke up in January 2020.
Kendall and Joe attempted to remain friends after calling it quits, but Kendall previously explained their breakup was difficult for her because they never fell out of love; it was logistics that broke them apart.
Kendall said she wanted to continue living in Los Angeles, CA, where her family and friends are, but Joe hoped to move back to his hometown of Chicago, IL, to be near his loved ones.
“What happened was we broke up, we fought… we had our differences… but then I came back to [Los Angeles] four months after and I was pushing to have that conversation,” Joe recalled on Bachelor in Paradise last summer.
“You were pushing to have me move to Chicago,” Kendall argued with Joe.
“I was pushing to have you try — yeah,” Joe clarified, “to come move to the city where I grew up in, where my friends and family are. I think if you just would’ve tried, we could’ve figured something out.”
Kendall said things probably would’ve ended the same way regardless because she had made it clear from the start of their relationship that moving away from her hometown was “a dealbreaker” for her.
“I wasn’t going to change my mind and I think you were hoping I would,” Kendall said on the show last year.
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“Your thing was that you didn’t want to move anywhere for a man… I should’ve been more than just ‘a man’ at that point, and we could’ve tried it,” Joe pointed out.
Once Kendall and Joe worked through a “messy” reunion and found the closure they needed, Joe pursued a relationship with Serena Pitt on Bachelor in Paradise.
“If she really wanted me back,” Joe said of Kendall on Bachelor in Paradise, “she should have told me before I got here and before I started this. Because I really, really loved her.”
Kendall ultimately decided to quit the show because she said it was too difficult to watch Joe with Serena and her feelings for Joe registered as painful realizations that she wasn’t over him. She didn’t want to sacrifice her mental and emotional well-being to stay on the show.
Joe and Serena, a Canada native, got engaged during the Bachelor in Paradise 7 finale, and they moved in together in New York City after the show.
Joe and Serena just got married in New York in an unexpected way in late October, and they plan to have a second wedding in 2023.
RELATED LINK: ‘THE BACHELOR’ FRANCHISE COUPLES NOW: WHO IS STILL TOGETHER?? (PHOTOS)
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About The Author:
Elizabeth Kwiatkowski
Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade.