Rachel Veltri, the 26-year-old Chicago flight attendant who'd been rejected by bachelor Preston Mercer during last month's For Love Or Money 3, picked love over money in Monday night's finale of her own For Love Or Money edition, choosing Caleb Janus, a 30-year-old realtor from Phoenix, AZ over a $1,000,000 prize.
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Whether Rachel had a last minute change of heart or was simply the victim of some intentionally slanted editing remains unknown, but one thing is clear -- in the end, just as FLOM3's Preston had done a month earlier, Rachel decided that she couldn't put a price on happiness (or maybe she just realized that given For Love Or Money's bogus 40 year payout period, the $1,000,000 prize wouldn't have been nearly as life-changing as it had been touted to be.)
Consistently portrayed from the point of For Love Or Money 3's initial promos to be a money-grubbing vixen out to score a huge cash prize, Rachel began For Love Or Money 4's finale with three men remaining, Caleb, Mike, and Dave S., a 28-year-old healthcare salesman from Pittsburgh, PA. After embarking on a series of 24-hour overnight dates in which each of the suitors was alone with her, Rachel appeared to emerge confident that Mike would select her over the unknown cash prize amount of his "mystery check," while her date with Caleb, with whom she felt a stronger attraction, left her unsure as to his intentions. That left Dave (who Rachel considered "more of a friend") as the odd man out, and Caleb and Mike as the Final 2.
In the end, Rachel cited the last-minute "mixed messages" that she was hearing from Mike as her reason for his dismissal, leaving Caleb as her selected suitor... and Caleb with the decision as to whether he would select Rachel (and unknowingly give her the chance to reject him in favor of the $1,000,000) or the unknown amount of his "mystery check."
Confessing the details of his "secret" decision to Rachel, Cabel explained that he was a "commitment-phobe" and Rachel began to imagine that her worst nightmare (getting rejected by two different men on national television... and not getting a single dollar for it) was coming true, only to hear Cabel surprise her by ending his speech by saying he'd decided to throw caution into the wind and pick her. Faced with the opportunity to finally get the $1,000,000 prize that viewers had seen her salivating over since her first appearance on For Love Or Money 3, Rachel then did the unimaginable... and selected Caleb over the cash.
As the happy couple strolled off into the night, a black light shown on Caleb's now-rejected check and the audience finally learned the amount of his rejected prize -- $1.00... the same amount of cash that For Love Or Money 3's P.J. Spillman had rejected in selecting Preston. Hopefully Rachel and Caleb will follow in P.J. and Preston's footsteps and find happiness together (as of this writing, P.J. and Preston are said to still be together, with P.J. moving to Denver to be with Preston.) However if Caleb's ominous post-finale interview comments are any indication -- he told The Arizona Republic that he is "looking forward to a 'good friendship' with Rachel," but that a commitment "isn't likely" -- perhaps Rachel would have been better off with the money (40 year payoff or not.)
