What Happened To Bachelorette Emily Maynard & Tyler Johnson After 2014 Wedding
Sometimes in life, you write your own happy endings! Emily Maynard had The Bachelor fans swooning when Brad Womack went down on his knee during their fairytale proposal in season 15. But the love story ended in heartbreak and Maynard soon became The Bachelorette herself. Love blossomed between Emily and Jef Holm on season 8, but although the single-mom said yes on the show, the romance once again came crashing down. Taking a break from reality TV drama, Emily found a love closer to home with Tyler Johnson and has been blissfully married since then.
It was a long time until The Bachelorette’s Emily Maynard, 34, found her prince charming. Just like the title of her book, Emily’s story involved heartbreak, redemption, and in the end, true love. If having your romantic life televised on a reality show is one thing, going through the same situation twice is a lot tougher. But what happens when both instances lead to failure? Emily, from Charlotte, North Carolina, was engaged to NASCAR driver Ricky Hendrick long before she made her ABC debut. But her fiancé tragically passed away in a plane crash and Emily soon gave birth to their daughter Josephine Riddick “Ricki” Hendrick in 2005. Getting proposed to by Womack on The Bachelor resulted in an on-again-off-again engagement, but Emily returned the ring back to her fiancé and officially called it quits in May 2011. Emily took another leap of faith when she chose entrepreneur Jef Holm to be a suitor amongst 25 eligible men on The Bachelorette. The reality TV couple were dubbed “Jemily” and stayed engaged for three months, until October 2012, amidst allegations of Emily cheating. Yet another Bachelorette romance bit the dust, but Emily proved that the fourth time was actually the charm by marrying Tyler Johnson.
The alum of The Bachelorette had met Tyler even before her reality TV stint. The pair met at Forest Hill Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. Emily became friends with her now-husband when she was teaching jewelry making to a middle school adopted by her church and Tyler was a coordinator at the program. “He was so good looking that I could barely make eye contact with him, much less have a normal conversation…for some reason I was so intimidated by him and the fact that he showed me no interest at all just made it that much worse,” Emily had once shared on her Instagram. Although the ABC star thought that she was “friendzoned” by him at first, she was engaged to Tyler by January 4th, 2014. Tyler proposed to Emily with not one, but five diamond-studded bands. “He proposed to me at home and gave both Ricki and me rings. Ricki loves him more than she likes me,” the bride-to-be had told Us Weekly back then. Come June 7, 2014, Emily and Tyler tied the knot at Johnson's parents' farm in a secret wedding ceremony. “Every minute of the wedding was so exciting, that I feel like I am still in this dream that I’ll never wake up from,” the former Bachelorette had said about her Southern-inspired fairytale wedding.
Soon after their fantastic rustic wedding, Emily Maynard Johnson found out that she and Tyler were expecting their first baby. Their son Jennings was born in July 2015. “God is good. My heart can’t even handle it,” Emily wrote in her Instagram caption for her adorable announcement post. Emily and Tyler, who works with Hendrick Automotive Group as a general manager, were soon blessed with a second baby boy in September 2016. Jennings, who the family affectionately call JT and Ricki became elder siblings to Gibson Kyle. Gibson came from Emily’s middle name and Kyle is his grandmother’s last name. The jewelry designer had earlier opened up about battling postpartum depression after her fiance’s death. But by the time she welcomed Gibson, she looked forward to the “chaos” and watching all the kids growing up together. The popular Bachelor star got pregnant soon again and gave birth to a third son in November 2017. The Maynard-Johnson couple named their fourth child Gatlin Avery. “I’ve always wanted kids,” Emily had confessed to People about having three babies in a span of two and a half years.
Emily, who’s always believed in the mantra of family first, proudly describes herself as “Mommy of 4” and wife to the hot guy from church on her Instagram page. Her social media bio also mentions Emily’s NYT bestseller ‘I Said Yes: My Story of Heartbreak, Redemption, and True Love.’ The popular book was the tell-all of her life before reality TV, her back-to-back loss of love, and her journey to discovering her “the one.” The Bachelor star's feed is full of pictures with the four children and Tyler, some of them captioned cutely with “times change and thank God for that.” In April 2018, Emily had opened up about losing her ex and Ricki’s father. Emily’s late fiancé and Tyler incidentally share the same birthday, i.e. 2 April, and Emily owes it all to “God’s redemptive love.” She recalled feeling like “God sitting in heaven smiling” at her when Tyler had told her about his birthday on their first date. In the same year, Ricki became a teenager and Emily spoke about being proud of her daughter who was by then, even taller than her.
May 2019 has a picture of Emily at a The Bachelorette reunion with the leading ladies of the past fifteen seasons posing for the camera. By June 2019, Emily and Tyler were celebrating five years of blissful marriage on their anniversary. The popular couple’s youngest baby boy Gatlin turned two in November 2019 and by February 2020 Emily and her husband had adopted a German Shepard puppy named Bullock. Tyler, who’s also associated with the Cana Plantation, loves posting pictures of him with the children amidst turkey season and fishing adventures on Instagram. He refers to his The Bachelorette life partner as his “best friend, wife, and super mommy” and the hardest worker in the family. The doting dad often shares how being a father to Ricki, 15, is “such an honor.” Tyler’s younger brother is Austin Johnson, an American football fullback, who is also a regular on his Instagram feed.
Emily Maynard Johnson was recently seen on an episode of The Bachelor: The Greatest Seasons -Ever! where she spoke about her romance with Womack, who also happens to the franchise’s first and only two-time Bachelor. She called it a great love story that didn’t last too long, but, after seeing glimpses of her life with husband Tyler, The Bachelorette’s fans can say that she moved on to much happier endings.
The Bachelor: The Greatest Seasons - Ever! returns on Monday, Aug. 31 on ABC at 8pm EST.
Source: US Weekly, Emily Maynard, Tyler Johnson