The Bachelor alum Matt James has allowed girlfriend Rachael Kirkconnell to shave his beard — and he’s apparently never going to let her do it again.
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“I will never let my girlfriend shave my beard again,” Matt captioned a TikTok video that he posted recently.
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In the video, Rachael, 27, shaved Matt’s beard down to just a mustache, revealing a totally new look for the 31-year-old former The Bachelor star.
The video began with Rachael telling her man, “This is my real Valentine’s Day gift.”
While Rachael was using an electric razor to shave off Matt’s beard, a woman behind the camera can be heard saying, “Oh my gosh. I don’t even know where your face is.”
The woman joked about how a chunk of beard trimmings looked like “a Brillo pad” and they “could wash dishes” with it.
After shaving only half of his face, the woman behind the camera joked, “We should just keep it like that.”
Once all of his facial hair was gone except for a mustache, Rachael gushed, “I’m going to cry! I missed your face! Now your beard hair won’t get all over the shower now!… I don’t have short, curly hair.”
Matt then caught a glimpse of the finished result in a mirror, and Rachael concluded, “Yay! It’s stache season! Do I miss [the beard]? No.”
Late last year, Matt told Us Weekly that Rachael didn’t mind his beard as long as he promised to “take care of it” and keep it looking well-groomed.
“She’s definitely more accepting this time around,” Matt told the magazine in October 2023, joking that he looked like “a wild man” before learning how to properly trim and shape his facial hair.
“I think that she appreciates how much thoughtfulness goes into it. So she’s cool with it, as opposed to me just looking ragged and just letting it go.”
Although Matt favored having a beard at the time, he admitted that he was going “back and forth” with the idea of shaving it off.
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Matt shaved his beard once before in May 2022 for an ad promoting his book First Impressions: Off Screen Conversations with a Bachelor on Race, Family, and Forgiveness. In the ad, Matt acted like he had been taken against his will and was “forced to cut” his beard.
“The last time I cut it was a big deal,” Matt told the magazine. “I like the way it looks and feels… I don’t know if it’s gonna go there [again].”
Matt gave his final rose to Rachael on The Bachelor’s Season 25 finale that filmed in late 2020, and despite a two-month split in early 2021, they’ve been going strong as a couple ever since April 2021.
In July 2023, Matt and Rachael discussed the pressure they feel to get engaged, especially since they fell in love on a show like The Bachelor.
Rachael joked with Us how she and Matt often “forget” they met on a reality show, but forgetting probably becomes more difficult when Bachelor Nation constantly asks them if they’ve broken up or if an engagement is on the horizon.
“I don’t get annoyed by any of that stuff. I get it,” Matt told Us in a joint interview with Rachael at the time.
“We post and share every aspect of our lives. So for people to be curious means that we’re, you know, keeping them in the loop and we want them in the loop.”
Rachael agreed that she understands the hype surrounding her relationship.
“They’ve been waiting for an engagement since the finale of the show,” Rachael acknowledged.
But The Bachelor winner asked fans to consider the fact she and Matt weren’t able to spend a lot of time together while filming The Bachelor and so their romance truly started in the real world, away from cameras.
“It’s not that weird [to not be engaged]. I feel like that’s pretty normal,” Rachael explained earlier this summer. “I feel like we’re doing all the right things to take our relationship to the next step.”
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The Bachelor winner and Matt gushed about how they’re extremely happy with their relationship.
“Matt really is just my best friend,” Rachael told the magazine.
“I think at the end of the day, it’s just really fun to live the life that we live together. I don’t think anything that we do would be nearly as fun if I weren’t with him.”
Rachael continued, “I love our dynamic, I think that we make each other better people. We bring out the better version of ourselves. I think we have a lot to teach each other.”
Matt also agreed that he’s been dating his best friend, which “makes everything that much better.”
“You get to enjoy life with that person,” the former The Bachelor star elaborated. “It’s a great come true. We’re always telling ourselves how blessed we are.”
Rachael told Us in June 2022 of taking her relationship with Matt to the next level, “The only timeline I give him is I was like, ‘I gotta have kids before, you know, I can’t have kids.’ So keep that in mind.”
Rachael said she and Matt weren’t concerned with others’ expectations for their relationship and future together.
“I feel like it’s pretty crucial to just have fun with one another no matter where we’re at or what we’re doing,” Rachael shared last year. “We got to make the most of everything.”
And Matt told the Los Angeles Times that same month, “We’re one of the only couples from that franchise still going strong. The reason is we’re going at things at our own pace. We’re not playing games that a lot of people play just to stay in that circle.”
Matt and Rachael constantly post videos of each other on social media. They are either trying new restaurants or traveling to destinations around the world.
After falling in love on The Bachelor, Matt and Rachael briefly split in February 2021 during Rachael’s memorable racism controversy, which resulted in former The Bachelor host Chris Harrison and ABC agreeing to part ways.
But Rachael was extremely apologetic, and so she and Matt reconciled in April 2021.
Due to Rachael and Matt’s tight bond, Rachael and Matt’s best friend, The Bachelorette 15 alum Tyler Cameron, have confessed to having a love-hate relationship.
Tyler and Rachael explained the cause of their feud on Tyler’s “Everybody But Me” radio show back in January 2023.
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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.