'The Bachelorette' winner Ed Swiderski's dad: "He still has his job"

The Bachelorette bachelor Ed Swiderski managed to get the girl and keep his job too.


Ed, who proposed to The Bachelorette star Jillian Harris after she selected him as her final suitor at May's taping of The Bachelorette fifth-season finale, still has the Microsoft Corporation job he had allegedly previously left the reality dating show to save, according to his father.

"He still has his job," Edward Swiderski Jr. told his local Monroe News newspaper following ABC's Monday night broadcast of the finale.

Ed, a 29-year-old technology consultant from Chicago, IL, had left The Bachelorette prior to the season's fifth Rose Ceremony after receiving a phone call in which his boss had allegedly told him he would be fired if he didn't leave the show and return to work.

"I had a conference call with my boss this morning and he's giving me a lot of pressure about being here," Ed told Jillian before he decided to leave the show.  "He's like 'What are you doing?'" 


"Things are starting to snowball and things are kind of starting to fall apart and my boss basically laid it out and said 'Well either you're going to be here working or you're going to be unemployed and you can go and find love,'" Ed explained in an interview afterwards.

Ed's mother had subsequently defended her son's decision to quit the show.

"He had just gotten this job.  He wanted to keep it. I guess maybe he didn't expect to go as far [on the show] as he did," Judith Elliott told the Chicago Sun-Times after Ed's departure was shown during ABC's broadcast of The Bachelorette's fifth fifth-season episode last month.

Ed returned to the show two episodes later after determining he had made the wrong decision.

"I realized that I made a huge mistake, I got home and I could not stop thinking about you," Ed told Jillian when he returned and attempted to convince her to give him a second chance.  "I felt like I need to re-prioritize what I'm doing and I think I need to be here with you.  I want another shot."


After thinking it over, Jillian decided to allow Ed to return -- which eventually led to the season's final Rose Ceremony in which she selected him over Kiptyn Locke, a 31-year-old business developer from Encinitas, CA.

Despite their rocky start, the couple's relationship has continued to grow since the finale was filmed two months ago, according to Ed's father.

"They had so much chemistry from the beginning," Edward Swiderski Jr. told the Monroe News. "She's an exceptionally fine girl and they are incredibly in love."






About The Author: Steven Rogers