- Chris Harrison has been the host of the Bachelor franchise since 2002.
- The dating show host found love with Entertainment Tonight producer Lauren Zima, who hosts a Bachelor recap show.
- Here's what you need to know about Harrison and Zima, a match made in TV heaven.
Chris Harrison watches people fall in love for a living. As the host of The Bachelor and its many spinoffs, Harrison shepherds hopeful singles towards rose ceremonies and proposals. With the 16th season of The Bachelorette airing on October 13, Harrison is a seasoned expert in coaching people through love.
Fittingly, Harrison also found love through the show. Harrison, 49, has been dating Entertainment Tonight host and producer Lauren Zima, 33, since 2018. They met while filming Bachelor segments on Entertainment Tonight.
Harrison was previously married to his college sweetheart, Gwen Jones. They divorced in 2012 and share two children, Taylor, 17 and Joshua, 18. Zima was also married for four years to Charles Mckeague.
According to Harrison, his relationship with Zima keeps getting "better and better" since 2018. Even social distancing has strengthened their bond. “I think it’s helped bring us closer together,” Harrison told People. “I think it’s helped us love each other more, respect and I think, appreciate the little things in each other a lot more because there is no getting away or just running away from this. We’re stuck. We’re in.”
Here's what you need to know about the couple—aside from the fact that they're in it for the long haul.
Lauren Zima is a TV producer at Entertainment Tonight.
After graduating from the University of Missouri's journalism program, Zima began her career in TV journalism—first at Newsy, then at MTV. She landed at Entertainment Tonight in 2015, where she currently works as a host and senior producer.
While on the job this year, Zima chatted with Dillon Passage and Carole Baskin of Tiger King, and went ice skating with Adam Rippon. Normally, Zima also chats up celebrities on the red carpet, too. Harrison admires Zima's ambition, saying “she’s as much as a grinder as I am."
She also hosts a Bachelor recap show for Entertainment Tonight.
Zima was a member of Bachelor Nation long before dating its tsar. Zima is the host of Entertainment Tonight's popular (and zany) Bachelor recap show, Roses and Rosé. In 2018, the same year she started dating Harrison (but before they went public), Zima filmed a segment about the host's best moments of the year—while wearing Harrison-themed earrings.
"Do you think there's anyone better than Chris Harrison at getting tears out of someone in a sit-down?" Zima asked.
Today, Zima is blisteringly up-to-date on the Bachelor beat. When Tayshia Adams was announced as the season's first-ever mid-season Bachelorette, for example, Zima posted the precedent-breaking news.
Zima and Harrison met through the Bachelor, naturally.
The Bachelor worked its matchmaking wonders on yet another couple. According to People, Harrison and Zima first met after the Bachelor host appeared as a recurring guest on Roses and Rosé.
While speaking to Nick Viall on the podcast Handcuffs and Half Truths in 2019, Zima revealed the exact moment their relationship went from professional to romantic. In 2018, Zima and Harrisoon reconnected while filming one of the franchise's tell-all episodes. They began talking while getting coffee at craft services.
"He gave me a different vibe," Zima said. "He somehow brought up being single. And then I said, 'I'm single now.'" Later, Zima said she sent him a DM, and Harrison asked her out to dinner.
They made their relationship red carpet official in 2019.
Harrison and Zima attended Entertainment Weekly‘s pre-Screen Actors Guild Awards party together in January 2019, their first public outing as a couple—though not their first time on camera together, as many Bachelor segments attest. The simple heart in Zima's Instagram caption said it all, though perhaps a rose would have been more appropriate.
Not long before their red carpet appearance, Zima teased their relationship in another Instagram caption. She named Harrison and then-Bachelor Colton Underwood "the two most important men" in her life.
The pandemic has "tested" their relationship, for the better.
Zima and Harrison have spent lockdown together, and—like many couples—have gotten to know each other on a far more intimate level. The couple opened up about how quarantine tested, and strengthened, their relationship while speaking to People.
“I said, there’s going to be a lot of corona babies and there’s going to be a lot of corona breakups as soon as this is over because it will test your relationship, and it’s tested ours, but in a good way,” Harrison said. “It’s helped us communicate. It’s helped us sit down and talk, and it’s helped us kind of see each other get frustrated at times.”
Zima said she appreciated Harrison's qualities even more now. “Chris is really, really good at keeping me grounded. I’m probably a little more emotional. He has great perspective. He’s very calming. So, all of the things that I loved in him before, I think I’m just seeing more and appreciating even more now.”
They even made time for a few quarantine TikToks.
They've spent time apart while The Bachelor and Bachelorette filmed in 2020.
The Bachelorette was filmed under special circumstances in 2020. After production was postponed in March due to the coronavirus pandemic, the cast gathered in hotel in Palm Springs in July to film in a "bubble." Filming wrapped in September without any coronavirus-related incidents.
In October, Harrison began filming The Bachelor, with Matt James at the helm. When their two-month separation began, Zima wrote a message on Instagram about this hectic and unusual year. "I’m so happy, supported and blessed in this relationship, so of course I’m grateful, but I’ll admit two months apart will be hard. Thankfully this crazy year of alternating between nonstop time together and weeks and weeks separate has only made our relationship stronger and shown me even more amazing sides of this man," Zima wrote.
The couple celebrated their two year anniversary in August.
Zima and Harrison's relationship has officially outlasted most of Bachelor Nation's. In honor of the occasion, Zima reflected on their romance.
"In this year I’ve leaned on you, laughed with you and fallen in love with you for the incredible man that you are. Thank you for adding to my life with your positivity, perspective and patience, and for supporting me in becoming exactly who I want to be. Thank you for being a source of joy, and for knowing that life is good when love is easy. Oh, and big thanks for the copious amounts of wine," Zima wrote.
For more updates, check out Zima and Harrison's Instagram pages.
Once famously private, Harrison now shares details of his personal life and relationship on social media—but it's been an adjustment. “I am intensely private and don’t live out loud despite what I do for a living. Lauren is much more the type of person that lives out loud. So she is trying to teach me, and I’m trying to meet halfway in the middle," he told People.
For more stories like this, sign up for our newsletter.
