'My Big Fat Fabulous Life's' Whitney Way Thore Is Engaged! Meet Her Fiancé Chase Severino
There's gonna be a big, fat, fabulous wedding!
getty Whitney Way Thore's career as a reality star all started with a viral video of her dancing. The video launched her TLC reality show "My Big Fat Fabulous Life" featuring the one-time radio host as she tried to navigate life, love, and career, all while showing the world that being overweight isn't anything to be ashamed of.
Fans have spent six seasons getting to know Whitney and her friends and family. In a promo for the new season that was just released, she is sharing that she has a new love in her life and he's not just hanging around for the season. This new boyfriend has become her fiancé. The couple got engaged on top of the Eiffel Tower and she is now sporting a big, fat, fabulous ring.
Who is Whitney Way Thore's fiancé? Read on to find out everything we know.
1. "My Big Fat Fabulous Life"
Before Whitney had a reality show she was an unemployed radio host. TLC picked her up for a reality series on the strength of a viral video she did and "My Big Fat Fabulous Life" premiered in 2015. The series featured Whitney as she navigated life as a recently unemployed twenty-something who was trying to get a career going while living with her charmingly eccentric parents and navigating a world that isn't always kind to overweight people. Whitney is the kind of engaging and fearless TV personality who was willing to get out of her comfort zone and the show gained fans who loved watching her do things like develop a dance class for overweight dancers and create a movement to address body shame.
2. Trying to find love
One of the continuing themes of Whitney's show was her attempts to find someone special. For a long time, she was carrying a torch for her best friend and roommate Buddy. They had been friends for a long time but it never blossomed into romance, despite Whitney's long-standing crush on him. In later seasons, audiences watched Whitney get involved with Lennie. The pair went through a couple of break-up make-up cycles. Their drama hit a climax in season four when Whitney discovered she was pregnant and Lennie, who wasn't her boyfriend anymore, was the dad. The two were trying to figure out how to navigate a potential co-parenting situation when Whitney got the news that the pregnancy test she had taken was a false positive.
Whitney briefly thought she had found happily ever after in Season Five when she was planning to marry a guy named Avi. But it turned out that Avi was actually planning to marry someone else. He was cheating on his first finacé with Whitney.
Whitney also briefly dated a woman on the show and carried on a flirtation with her boss at a radio job she had for a while, but there were no other major romantic developments for the dancer, except for some kisses with Buddy. Did that relationship ever move to the next level? Nope. They thought about the possibility during season six but it never panned out.
RELATED: Who Is Buddy Bell? New Details About 'My Big Fat Fabulous Life' Star Whitney Thore's Boyfriend
3. A new man in the picture
Fans who follow Whitney's social medial feeds noticed photos of a new guy in the past year, according to Starcasm. She teased his identity and their relationship with Instagram post captions saying things like "Can’t wait for y’all to meet this man," but like any veteran reality star, she kept the good stuff secret until it was ready for primetime. This week, TLC dropped the season preview video on Facebook and there are plenty of answers to the question of who the mystery man is. Whitney explained that his name is Chase Severino and he's a friend of her new business partner Ryan. She also makes it very clear that he is her new boyfriend.
4. What about Buddy?
Chase looks to be head over heels for Whitney in the videos but he doesn't seem as enamored of Buddy. Even though Whitney explains that the one kiss never developed into anything more, Chase is convinced that Buddy harbors feelings for Whitney and that they are just too close for comfort. He even goes so far as to call them codependent and it's obvious from the video that the whole friendship is a source of tension for the new couple.
5. A trip to the City of Love
Whatever misgivings Chase has about Buddy, he was able to put them aside for a trip to Paris with Whitney. Though she thinks the main reason for the trip is to do promotions for her new fitness video venture with her business partner Ryan, with Chase along there's no question that there will be some room for romance. That's what Paris is all about, after all.
In one dramatic clip, TLC shows Whitney on top of the Eiffel Tower, gushing about the view. Chase is kneeling behind her with a ring in hand and says "Look how beautiful it is." She turns as gasps and the video cuts off, presumably just before he proposed to her.
They confirmed that the proposal happened with an Instagram post in which Whitney showed off the giant yellow sapphire ring he gave her. "Chase and I got engaged on October 9th in Paris and I’m quite possibly the happiest woman alive. It has been REAL hard to keep this a secret!" she wrote about the engagement.
6. A big fat fabulous wedding?
Fans hoping for a proposal and wedding all in one season may have to hold their horses a little bit. The description for the season sounds like it this will be more about falling in love than walking down the aisle. Whitney told People that she and Chase are planning to watch it all unfold, saying "We can’t wait to see the new season and watch as we hang out for the first time, go on our first date, fall in love, and make life-changing plans in Paris. It has truly been a dream.” In a video, she talks about wedding planning just a little but doesn't indicate that we'll be seeing any of that just yet. "I don’t really think, like, I’m going to be a bridezilla. I feel like I’m going to be pretty low maintenance. I think if anyone’s going to cause problems it’ll definitely be [my mother] Babs."
When they do get around to planning the wedding, we're hoping for a cross over with "Say Yes To The Dress," where Babs and Whitney go to New York and do an episode with Randy at Kleinfeld.
Rebekah Kuschmider has been writing about celebrities, pop culture, entertainment, and politics since 2010. Her work has been seen at Ravishly, Babble, Scary Mommy, The Mid, Redbook online, and The Broad Side. She is the creator of the blog FeminXer about being a GenX feminist and she is a cohost of the weekly podcast The More Perfect Union.