The Bachelorette alum Katie Thurston has revealed that she joined a celebrity dating app following her split from John Hersey.
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"Have you guys heard of the dating app Raya?" the Season 17 The Bachelorette star said in a TikTok video posted on Tuesday.
"It's supposed to be, like, an elite dating app that you have to, like, apply to and get approved for and blah, blah, blah."
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Katie said she thought there was "going to be a long waitlist" and that it would take a while to get approved.
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"So I was like, 'I'll apply now and in six months from now, I'll start dating,'" Katie explained. "Well, they approved me right away!"
Katie admitted, "I wasn't ready but that's fine. They have the option of 'just for friends,' and so I clicked that and I matched with someone and we're talking. And then I get unmatched. Just for friends!"
Katie wrote in the caption of her TikTok post, "I joined Raya and can't even make a friend."
Katie announced in late June she and John -- a San-Diego based bartender who was eliminated during Week 2 of Katie's The Bachelorette season -- had called it quits on their relationship.
Katie simply wrote on Instagram Stories at the time, "Statement: no we aren't together," and declined to provide any details or specifics.
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Katie subsequently conducted a Q&A session with fans, and when asked what went wrong in her relationship, Katie explained, "This is a simple yet complicated breakup given that we were best friends before dating."
"We are on good terms so [we're] just finding a healthy balance of space in order for closure," Katie wrote.
"At the end of the day," she continued, "you just want the person you love to be happy and you support whatever path they want to take to find that."
A little over one week after Katie announced her split from John, she told fans how she was trying to heal and find closure.
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Katie insisted she'd be "discovering solo dating all summer long," meaning that she planned to "date" herself and just focus on her own well-being.
It quickly became evident Katie and John had truly ended their romance on good terms when they attended the San Diego County Fair together in late June with several of their mutual friends, including The Bachelor alum Tammy Ly.
John also defended Katie on social media shortly after their breakup made headlines.
A troll wrote on the @BachelorWhatever Instagram account, "I feel like Katie is the reason she can't get a guy."
And John responded in the comments, "You will speak a finite number of words throughout your life. I urge you to speak more kindly, especially about someone you don't know."
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"I have never been so supported or unconditionally loved by a partner," he added. "Assuming and implying that Katie is doing something wrong does not sit right with me. The Internet can be a mean place -- let's not add to it."
When John confirmed his split from Katie, he wrote in a statement of his own, "I love being able to share special moments with you all -- the funny ones. The happy ones. The outrageous, embarrassing, and heartfelt ones. But I don't know if it will ever get easier to share the sad ones."
"As Katie stated earlier, we are no longer dating. This decision was not made lightly, and it was obviously not an easy one to make," he continued.
"I appreciate every one of you that has supported us throughout this journey. We could not (and would not) be here without you."
Katie and John met in early 2021 while filming The Bachelorette, but they didn't go Instagram official with their relationship until late November 2021.
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Katie unveiled John as her boyfriend late last year by posting footage of John on Instagram Stories set to Taylor Swift's "Begin Again," a song about falling in love all over again.
The John dedication served as the conclusion of Katie's "12 Days of Messy" challenge in which she had been tasked with matching the theme or meaning of every song on Taylor's re-released "Red" album to one of her Season 17 bachelors.
The former bank marketing manager and John revealed in April 2022 that they were living together at Katie's apartment in San Diego, and they gushed on the "Off the Vine with Kaitlyn Bristowe" podcast how they were madly in love.
John had also purchased a van so he and Katie could travel across the country and visit different cities together.
Katie, however, said of possibly getting engaged at the time, "Look, the last thing I need right now is any kind of engagement. I am very, very content with where I'm at in my relationship with John."
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Katie had said she didn't "feel pressure at all" for John to pop the question.
"In the normal world when you aren't on a dating show, it's not normal to ask that after just a few months," Katie noted.
John previously admitted his nerves got the best of him while filming The Bachelorette and so he didn't make a good impression on Katie, who thought her initial conversations with John were "robotic" and rehearsed.
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Katie therefore got engaged to wildlife manager Blake Moynes during her The Bachelorette season finale, which filmed in April 2021 and aired in August last year.
Katie and John went public with their romance only three short weeks after Katie and Blake announced in late October they had split and decided to end their engagement.
Katie faced backlash for having moved on from her former fiance too quickly with a "rebound," and Blake said on the "Talking It Out with Bachelor Nation" podcast in November that he felt "flabbergasted," shocked and "speechless" upon finding out about Katie's romance with John.
Blake also said he believed Katie had been emotionally cheating on him with John -- which Katie and John have both firmly denied in the press.
Once Blake had some time to move past the breakup, he told Ben Higgins and Ashley Iaconetti on their "The Ben & Ashley I: Almost Famous Podcast" in February 2022 that he was ready to put his romance with Katie behind him and put aside any hard feelings.
Blake recently suggested he'd be open to dating both women from Bachelor Nation or someone without fame and a social-media following.
Rumors began to swirl in late July that he's dating Love Is Blind alum Natalie Lee, but the pair were in Nevis working on a project to save sea turtles together, and so it appears the trip may have been a business one.
Prior to starring on The Bachelorette, Katie competed on Matt James' season of The Bachelor.
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