NEED TO KNOW
- Rachel and Steven were one of MAFS’s sweetest couples, and both said ‘yes’ at the Final Vows ceremony.
- Despite being considered a ‘slow-burn’ love story, the relationship did not survive, with Rachel speaking to New Idea EXCLUSIVELY about what REALLY happened.
- Rumours started swirling after the ceremony that the couple had split just one week after leaving the show, due to Steven’s reluctance to relocate.
Rachel Gilmore signed up to Married At First Sight, hoping to find her happily ever after. And for a moment, it seemed like she had.
Rachel and groom Steven Danyluk re-committed to each other during the Final Vows ceremony. But her joy was short-lived, as Steven ended their relationship just a few weeks later, right before they shot the reunion.
“Heartbreak is the worst. It sucks. It’s like a physical illness,” Rachel, 35, tells us.
Although the split happened some months ago now, Rachel’s pain is still clear to see when New Idea caught up with her, ahead of the reunion airing, to talk about the break-up.
During our emotional chat, Rachel says she started seeing red flags when Sydney-based Steven began using “every excuse” not to visit her in Melbourne, once filming ended late last year.
“I was willing to put in the effort, but ultimately it happened exactly the way I was concerned it was going to happen,” Rachel confesses. “Steven went back to life in Sydney. He was busy with work, and I became a burden.”
“I was the burden, and I had to be dropped.”
Through tears, she claims, “he said some outrageous things to me, such as how coming to visit me was a hassle … There was always something that would come up, another priority, something more important than me and our relationship.”
Rachel also felt Steven starting to push her away when he questioned their viability as a couple, “not even a week out” of MAFS ending.
“He’d say, ‘I don’t even know if we’re going to work in the future.’ That was probably the most hurtful thing to say to me,” she says.
“When Steven did come see me in Melbourne, he said, ‘I don’t think I can give you what you need. I think you need a man who can actually give you what you want.’ We circled in this conversation until I went, ‘so I guess we’re done then?’ And he looks at me, and I said, ‘Well, you’ve dumped me about 15 times now.”
Rachel claims Steven, 35, also made her rethink every discussion they’d had – including about starting a family together, given her ticking biological clock.
“We talked about it all … we had the plans,” she says.
Shortly after the break-up, Rachel went to Thailand with fellow bride, Alissa Fay, on a girls’ trip. While there, she found out Steven misled her several times during filming, like when he’d tell her he was at the gym but was really with groom Danny Hewitt getting coffee.
“If you’re lying to me about your whereabouts, what else are you lying to me about?” Rachel says, pondering.
Watching MAFS back has been unsettling for Rachel, as she realised she was more interested in Steven than he ever was in her. However, in hindsight, she is glad she didn’t uproot her life for the relationship. It would have been a big mistake to relocate to Sydney, she says, as she was doing all the “compromise”.
Rachel claims Steven’s idea of “making an effort” was offering to come around at 10pm to “watch a movie and to see me briefly before I would go to bed. It was Steven’s life, and I had to adapt to it. He wasn’t ready for a relationship.”