Last year, Taylor Krause decided to go out of DC with a bang.
Five years after moving to the nation’s capital to work in clean energy and climate change policy, the 29-year-old was feeling restless. Her life felt transient, she was frustrated with the dating scene in DC, and she began to make plans to move back to her hometown of San Diego.
But then, Taylor kept getting recruited to do something completely out of character for her: Go on Love is Blind. By about the fifth time someone contacted her to do the show, she decided to throw caution to the wind and go for it.
“This will be my last hurrah of dating in DC,” she thought. “Why not? It’s probably not going to materialize into anything.”
Taylor never expected to fall in love, but she did. In the pods, she had an instant connection with 33-year-old Garrett Josemans, a physicist who she bonded with over their matching science-themed tattoos. The couple were the first to get engaged during season seven, and have emerged as a clear fan favorite for making it to the altar in the show’s finale later this month.
But as much as fans are enjoying their love story, they’re mostly just here for Taylor. On social media, she has been called a “breath of fresh air,” “beautiful,” “sophisticated,” and, perhaps the greatest compliment of all for a reality star, normal. It’s all a life twist that she certainly didn’t see coming.
“I thought I was going to go for a couple of weeks and find out then my personality was the whole problem, and I was going to leave the pods,” she jokes.
Taylor chatted with Glamour about how her life has changed since making that fateful choice, what she learned about herself, and how we all can make a difference in the climate crisis. (Note, this interview covered through episodes 1-9 of Love is Blind).
Glamour: Okay, let’s get to the most important things first. No spoilers, but I have to ask you what you think about the memes of Garrett’s wardrobe and styling improvements.
Taylor Krause: I think that it really could go either way. He could have had a breakup glow-up, or he has a really great lady in his life that could be me, could not be me.
Very good—and cagey—answer. So far, your relationship with Garrett has been relatively stable for Love Is Blind. There have been some challenges, like your parents being skeptical about the show. How was that to navigate?
Honestly, your daughter getting married and having a wedding—all of those things are things that I think most parents hope that they’re involved in and are a part of. And so, I felt guilty. I felt like I was taking that away from them and making them go through a really fast-paced thing that they didn’t necessarily sign up for. Once they were able to talk to me and see that I’m okay, they were way more open to it. As a viewer, I remember watching parents that were absolutely not into it and being like, come on. Now I’m like, oh my God, no, this is nuts. I get it.
We also saw you and Garrett have some pretty intense conversations about the fact that ultimately, you want to raise kids in your hometown of San Diego. Were you always planning to move back home?
DC in particular is a very transient city. It’s kind of a revolving door. Clearly there’s a turn of administrations, and then all the jobs that go with that. I’d been in DC for about five years up to that point and didn’t really have a lot of luck dating there. But every time I came back to San Diego, I kind of got in a situationship. I was thinking that, okay, well, maybe it makes sense. I want to have kids near my parents. It would make sense to come back to San Diego and find someone that wanted to be in San Diego.
But then you ended up on Love Is Blind. Did you bring up your plans in the pods?
Going into the pods, I brought up that I’m from San Diego and really want to raise my family there. It’s actually never been that hard of a sell for men that I’ve dated to be open to doing that. But for Garrett in particular, he was like, “I could do that.” Other guys that I was dating were like, “I could do that.” I was shocked. I was really shocked that they would be willing to do something like that. At the time, I was like, oh, duh, it’s San Diego. That sounds great. You [Garrett] like fishing. There’s fishing there.
The weather speaks for itself, in my opinion.
Yeah, so we didn’t talk too much about it in the pods. As it became a bit more real, and clearly that means he’s moving away from his family, that’s really tough. That was the impetus for talking about it a lot more once we left the pods.
Did you ever consider deciding to stay in DC or move to Virginia, where Garrett is from?
I said that I would never want to raise my family in Fredericksburg. I couldn’t. Garrett promised me that he would never bamboozle me to stay in Fredericksburg. We were actually discussing doing a digital nomad thing and trying New York City on. So in terms of moving back to San Diego, it was actually far out into the future. So, you never know. We were talking about a lot of things, and you’re getting married on reality television. You’re hoping that you can talk about a five-year plan, but I don’t think any of us planned to be in the position that we were in.
You and Garrett also ended up being a part of the aftermath of Stephen and Monica’s pretty intense break-up. How did you end up being the ones to console her?
So, that night I had baked all these pumpkin muffins for all the couples, and we were delivering them. Garrett had texted Stephen like, Hey, coming up with muffins. And then because of that, Monica checked his phone and saw the text messages. It kind of all went from there. So when we were coming up with the muffins, it was just really bad timing.
So Stephen was really brought down by muffins.
I call it Muffin-Gate. I was texting Monica this morning; I was like, I almost bought those Trader Joe Pumpkin Muffins to make this week for fall. But then I was like, probably not. Probably not. It’s like bad luck to do that.
Oh wow. Not the Trader Joe’s muffins!
They’re really good, and they’re gluten free. I can’t recommend them enough.
Everyone on Love Is Blind kind of acknowledges that this is such a weird “experiment” to be a part of. But both you and Garrett seem to be very analytical and down-to-earth people in a way that suggests doing something like this is very out of the box. Did you ever expect to get this far on the show? Can you believe you did it?
It would’ve been hard to have gone that far with someone who was not Garrett, who is also a very logical person. This was very fast and surprising and out of character in a lot of ways for both of us, but we had a lot of signs. I’m not a “woo-woo” person at all, but he had a tattoo of the Heisenberg principle, and I have my little hydrogen tattoo, and we connected on all these little things. I think the universe in the pods was saying, there’s all these coincidences that are just more than coincidences, and this guy very much checks so many of the boxes that you’ve been looking for. Now you just have to figure out logistics.
I thought the moment where Garrett told you he found you to be a bit guarded in the pods, and you seemed surprised and took the feedback, to be an interesting moment of communication between the two of you. What did you learn about yourself through this experience?
It was a really big growing moment for me. I was asking someone that I was dating for feedback on how to make them more comfortable, to keep going, to share information. I admit that I’m a thoughtful person, and so in terms of when I speak or say things, I think about them before. I’m not necessarily someone that just blurts out a bunch of stuff. So, I can really empathize and see why Garrett thought I was calculated and guarded. You’re kind of in this fishbowl of all these cameras, and you’re having deep conversations. I’m like, Ah, I’m not used to saying all these things.
This experience taught me that I can be thoughtful and still think about the words that I have to say, but find ways that I can ask my partner to make them more comfortable and open up more. The word calculated wasn’t the best word choice by Garrett, but I understood what he was saying. I think we addressed it pretty well. You saw we fixed it and moved on.
Had you watched the show before you went on it? What surprised you about being on the show?
I watched every season as a passive thing when I was folding laundry…I didn’t realize how big of a show it was until I was on it. I really didn’t realize it’s number one on Netflix, and there’s millions and millions of people watching it, and there’s a whole fandom around it. I’m not someone who really watches reality television. It was just kind of a convenient thing on my Netflix account, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how much people love this show.
You have emerged as a fan favorite this season. Did you see that coming?
I’ve been gobsmacked, honestly… Garrett and I talked about it on our last date, and I was like, we’re probably super boring, babe. I hate to tell you that we’re going to probably not go past this point [of filming]. I didn’t think we’d be a fan favorite. I thought we would be middle of the pack, or like, “Fast forward, fast forward, fast forward.” So I’ve been pleasantly surprised.
You also now have nearly 100,000 followers on Instagram. What’s it been like getting all this attention online?
It has been weird. I mean, the human brain is not supposed to get this much attention. I’ve just been riding this high and taking in stride and hoping for the best because there’s still time left to do something not so good.
You work in clean energy policy, and we saw your tweet where you said that you would be happy to chat about the intersection of dating and climate communication. So, please share with us that intersection!
It’s about open-mindedness. In terms of being very binary about what side of the aisle you’re on, or how things should be solved, that openness and the ability to learn from each other is a huge part of dating that I think is missing. Before, I would go into a date with my little checklist, and it’s like, I need this, this, and this. Being able to be in a relationship where I felt like we were solving a lot of things at the same time with each other is what’s also needed for climate change. I feel like the problem just keeps getting politicized and becoming, you’re right, you’re wrong, rather than this collaborative thing. That’s what that intersection is.
Fascinating. I see it.
I know. It’s super nerdy.
Speaking of climate change, in your expert opinion what can your average Love Is Blind viewer who cares do that can actually make a difference?
Vote.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity
The post Love Is Blind’s Taylor Krause Didn’t See Any of This Coming appeared first on Glamour.
