Emily Maynard is happy that the days of seeing her face plastered across the tabloids are behind her. The former Bachelorette, who captivated America with her Barbie doll good looks, sweet Southern charm and tragic backstory, is now married (but not to Jef Holm, the guy she picked on ‘The Bachelorette’ or Brad Womack, the guy who proposed to her on ‘The Bachelor’) and pregnant with her second child.
In a new interview with North Carolina’s WCCB News, Emily talked about her time as ‘The Bachelor,’ which she calls “one of the darkest times” of her life.
“Darkest, just meaning all the media attention that came with it,” Emily told the new station’s Morgan Fogarty. “You’re always your own worst enemy, so I would watch it back and think I should have done this, done that, and having everything blow up in my face a couple times and go through a public embarrassment a couple times. It wasn’t ideal.”
Now, nearly three years to the day that Emily’s season of ‘The Bachelorette’ premiered, Emily is happy to be out of the spotlight.
“That’s just not what’s important to me anymore,” she said. “I’m just happy to have that in the past and everything be normal now.”
Emily’s daughter, Ricki, is now nine years old, and has adjusted nicely to life off-camera. She has also adjusted to having Emily’s new husband, Tyler Johnson, in the house. (Ricki’s father, race car driver Ricky Hendrick, died in a plane crash in 2004 while Emily was pregnant with Ricki.)
She will, of course, have to adjust to having another baby in the house. A few months ago, Emily told her social media followers that she and Tyler were expecting their first baby together.
“It’s a boy,” she said, adding that she and Tyler haven’t decided on a name yet. “We are going back and forth. I told Tyler that [if] he gets to pick the last name for everybody, then I should pick the first name…We’re still compromising.”
