Taken! Katie Morton confirmed her romance with boyfriend James Rowe, more than a year after she and Chris Bukowski ended their engagement.
“It’s like in that moment the whole universe existed just to bring us together,” Morton, 28, wrote via Instagram on Tuesday, February 16, alongside a photo of her and James together in a park.
Rowe, 29, was leaning down to kiss Morton on the cheek in the snap as she sat on a blanket surrounded by fall leaves. The Aldershot Town FC soccer player’s face is not visible, but the Bachelor in Paradise alum tagged her new man, identifying him for the first time.
Before becoming Instagram official, the Bachelor alum teased her new relationship by sharing a close-up photo of herself via her Instagram Story on Tuesday.
“What do you think I’m smiling about in this photo …” she wrote on the photo. Morton then posted the same fall-themed snap from her main Instagram page captioning it, “nbd.”
The Florida native gave fans another glimpse at her boyfriend, who is a professional soccer player from Oxford, England, in an Instagram Story video. In the clip, the athlete can be seen handing Morton a drink while she sits on the picnic blanket.
“You thought it might be cold?” the reality star asked Rowe, before she noted that she was in fact getting chilly.
Morton continued to gush about her relationship, telling fans in another social media video, “You guys are like my hype squad and thank you. That was scary, but I’m happy.”
The TV personality, who is currently living in London, also revealed the rest of her Tuesday plans entailed watching “my favorite movie” Serendipity, telling her followers, she is “in that hopeless romantic kind of mood.”
Morton previously dated Bukowski, 34, whom she met on season 6 of Bachelor in Paradise. The pair got engaged during the August 2019 finale after a whirlwind romance but called it quits four months later.
“We’ve reached a point in our story where we agree it’s best to go our separate ways,” the pair said in a joint statement in December 2019. “We have chosen to love and respect each other as friends because that’s the base of our relationship, and it’s what is most natural for us.”
Nearly a year later, Morton exclusively told Us Weekly that she was seeing someone new.
“We met two weeks before Paradise, randomly on the street and didn’t talk at all because I was not in the headspace to be meeting any men,” Morton explained on Us’ “Here for the Right Reasons” podcast in November 2020. “Then, randomly, I had all of that drop, like, a not so good relationship that obviously everyone saw, then I had a big, sad moment to myself. I had to rebuild myself back up, having a lot of self-love and care and I got back to right at the point I was right before Paradise and he slid into my DMs.”
The season 23 Bachelor contestant detailed her relationship at the time, telling Us that she was “keeping it super private.”
Morton added that she was “trusting” her gut this time around, revealing the pair were having a “really good time” even during the coronavirus pandemic lockdown in London. She concluded: “I’m really happy.”
