Nick Viall revealed that he checked Natalie Joy’s ID to make sure she was of legal age before agreeing to date her.
“We started messaging, and I carded her,” the “Bachelor” alum, 42, admitted while on Taylor Lautner and wife Tay Lautner’s podcast “The Squeeze” Wednesday.
Agreeing with her fiancée’s sentiment, Joy, 24, recalled, “He was like, ‘I want to see your ID.'”
Explaining that Joy “slid into” his Instagram “DMs” before they agreed to meet for the first time in New York City, Viall expressed that they were “both pretty guarded” in the beginning.
Viall — who proposed to Joy in January — said that the couple’s 18-year age gap was something he was “self-conscious” about before he agreed to date, but the two ultimately took their casual relationship to the next level.
Revealing that Viall had turned down Joy’s proposition to be in a relationship “so many times” as the two casually dated, Viall elaborated that, at the time, he just “wasn’t sure” and “wanted to get to know [Joy] better.”
However, Joy apparently knew that the reality star would come to his senses.
“I was like, I am going to spend the rest of my life with this man, and I knew it and he didn’t, so I was like, I’m gonna hang on because he’ll come around,” she said.
The couple was first romantically linked back in 2020, originally denying romance rumors before going Instagram-official in January 2021.
Despite having dated for some time, the model shared that after they finally went public, she would get “DMs of mean comments” calling Joy a “child bride” and other “terrible, terrible things.”
The online hate hasn’t stopped this couple, as the two got engaged this past January.
“For the rest of my life, it’s you,” Viall wrote on a joint Instagram post featuring the sparkler in the couple’s engagement announcement.
A few days later, Viall shared that he set up a video to play in a candle-lit room confessing his feelings to Joy before he walked downstairs and got down on one knee.
With tears in his eyes, Viall said in the video, “I can’t wait to start a family with you. It’s unreal to me that you get to be the mother of my children. I love you.”
