The Bachelor bachelorette Gabby Windey has cleared up her dating history in light of headlines she had past relationships with Bachelor Nation's Dean Unglert and Blake Horstmann.
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Gabby, a 30-year-old ICU nurse from Denver, CO, received a rose from Clayton Echard on The Bachelor's Season 26 premiere, but the former pro football player is apparently not the first The Bachelorette alum she's dated.
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Gabby dished on how serious -- or insignificant -- her prior romances were with Dean and Blake during a Thursday appearance on "Talking It Out with Bachelor Nation" hosted by Mike Johnson and Bryan Abasolo.
"We don't have our phones when we're filming, and I came home to all this stuff about how Blake and Dean had been talking about me," Gabby said, adding how it's been "crazy" and adjusting to normal life again was "hard."
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But Gabby noted how she was relieved and "grateful" to find out Dean and Blake had both said "really positive things" about her.
"I feel like there's a lot of conversation about it," Gabby said.
"I dated Dean over 10 years ago. I think we were 18 or 19, so maybe 12 years ago now, in college. He was one of my first loves."
Gabby's recollection of her relationship with Dean corroborates what he had said in October 2021.
Without naming Gabby directly at the time, Dean had said on an episode of his "Help! I Suck at Dating!" podcast, "She was, like, one of [my] main exes," according to Us Weekly.
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"She was my girlfriend from college," Dean had shared. "Producers called me and were like, 'Hey, we're thinking of casting this person -- what do you think of her? We know that you dated 10 years ago.'"
Dean -- who is now in a serious and committed relationship with The Bachelor alum Caelynn Miller Keyes -- acknowledged at the time how Gabby is an amazing girl and he was in love with her.
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"And I was like, 'Oh, she's great. If she gets selected for the show, she'll either win the show or she'll be the next Bachelorette.' And I firmly believe that," Dean had said.
Gabby said on "Talking It Out" that her relationship with Dean, however, is in "a distant past" from her experience on The Bachelor's 26th season.
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"It was just so long ago... Clayton and I's story, it's very much its own thing," Gabby insisted.
"I'm almost really grateful it was far in the past so I could focus more on Clayton and kind of be separate, at least so I thought. I knew things were going to come up."
As for Blake, he told Us last year how he and Gabby had dated for a couple of months after her relationship with Dean ended.
"I didn't know Dean until obviously, like, 2018, but Gabby was a good friend of one of my very good friends from college. They were roommates," Blake said on his "Behind the Rose" podcast in October 2021.
"I met Gabby long before I was on The Bachelorette, like, I want to say maybe 2015 or 2016. We hung out for a little bit, so I know her very well."
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Blake called Gabby "fun" and "loud" and said at the time she has a "very outgoing personality."
But Gabby suggested her fling with Blake wasn't an actual romantic relationship.
"Blake and I had mutual friends... I want to say when I first got out of college. So it was like 2013 or 2014. We never actually went on a date; there were no drinks paid for, no dinner paid for," Gabby explained to Mike and Bryan.
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"[Blake is] saying we dated," she complained.
"And you're saying you didn't really date?" Mike asked for clarification.
"Right," Gabby replied. "Yeah. He's like one of my friends of friends, you know, we had spent time together and stuff. But definitely no official dating [or] no formal [relationship] or exclusivity."
And Gabby reiterated how that was also "a really long time ago."
"So yeah, it's nice to kind of have that separation. I've had boyfriends since both of them that have really taught me a lot of things," she shared.
Gabby said she's learned a lot from past relationships -- after Dean and Blake -- that helped her grow "into a woman and as a partner."
"So I think they're great people," Gabby said of the two The Bachelorette alums.
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"And I'm grateful for all of the nice things that they said about me. But it's nice to kind of clear up my dating history, which seems to be a topic of conversation!"
When Blake discussed Gabby on his podcast last year, he also said that when Gabby walks into a room, you know she's arrived.
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"You never know if [The Bachelor] lead is going to be into something like that," Blake acknowledged.
"You never know if they like the more shy, quiet type or they like the loud, outgoing type, but she's definitely very loud, very outgoing, she has a lot of friends."
"So if Clayton's into that," Blake elaborated, "I see her getting hometowns, for sure. She's a beautiful woman... They're gonna have the football player, cheerleader storyline."
Blake, who found fame when he competed for Becca Kufrin's heart on The Bachelorette's fourteenth season, is now reportedly dating Love Is Blind alum Giannina Gibelli.
Dean initially appeared on Rachel Lindsay's season of The Bachelorette, and both he and Blake appeared on Bachelor in Paradise.
Gabby was one of 22 women remaining after Clayton handed out roses at the first Rose Ceremony of the season. The Bachelor currently airs on Monday nights at 8PM ET/PT on ABC.
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