Rachel Reilly and Brendon Villegas will forever remember the Big Brother house moment that made it impossible to ignore their romantic connection.
“I saw him walk in, and I thought he was obviously super hot,” Rachel, 41, exclusively shared with Us when recalling the pair’s summer of 2010 meeting. “I was like, ‘Oh my gosh! This guy’s gonna be trouble.’ But I think we really bonded when we went on the block together.”
Brendon, however, walked away from their initial exchange with a different take.
“I thought Rachel was attractive, but I of course thought she was a ditz,” he confessed. “I really was anti-relationship. I’ll be honest with you. I had been burned not too long before being on Big Brother, so I was definitely not looking.”
In a Big Brother summer surprise, Rachel and Brendon, 46, quickly fell in love during season 12, quickly becoming one of the reality show’s most beloved and successful couples.
Married since 2012 and the proud parents of two kids, the pair — known affectionately by fans as Brenchel — have built a celebratory life away from Hollywood in Alabama.
Brendon works full-time as a fully-certified medical physicist. When she’s not filming projects — like a special stint on this season’s Big Brother — Rachel is volunteering at her children’s schools, reporting for carpool duty and coaching various sports teams.
“She keeps us way too busy doing a lot of activities and driving all over the place to take the kids to acting, to different camps, to sports,” Brendon revealed. “She’s a volleyball coach. She’s made me [serve as] a soccer coach. She was signed up to be a soccer coach, and then she went on Traitors and was like, ‘Oh yeah! Hey, can you take over soccer?’ I was like, ‘You went to one game, and you’re making me coach the entire season?’”
As they celebrate more than a decade of marriage in the public eye, Rachel and Brendon aren’t afraid to reveal their secrets to a happy marriage.
Both parties agree that listening, compromising and making time for one another are important skills that never go out of style.
“I think one thing I started to realize is you got to work together and a big part of that is at least setting aside your ego enough to say, ‘Hey, I may not be right in this situation,’” Brendon shared.
Rachel added, “I was also going to say make sure you have adult time because the kids are right now in the other room or I would say more. But making sure that you take time for each other because you need that. You need to reconnect on different levels. We’ve done couples counseling, and we totally believe in that too.”
Although Rachel and Brendon didn’t earn the top prize on their season of Big Brother — she went on to compete in season 13 and took home the finale cash — both continue to be big winners in the never-ending game of love.
When asked if they thought about renewing their vows on TV in the future, both parties were open to doing it. After all, they did get married in 2012 thanks to David Tutera and WE tv’s My Fair Wedding.
“We had both talked about it, and we were thinking about it for our 10-year, and then life happened,” Rachel shared. “We’re coming up on 15. We said maybe we’ll do it for that one because that’s a really big wedding anniversary.”
Big Brother airs on CBS Sundays, Wednesdays and Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET.
