The Bachelorette alum Jason Tartick and TikTok star Kat Stickler just hard launched their relationship.
“Heart is full 🫶,” Stickler, 29, wrote via Instagram on Wednesday, June 12, alongside two photos of Tartick, 35, embracing her from behind. In one of the snaps, Tartick planted a kiss on a smiling Stickler’s face.
While the post marks the pair’s Instagram debut as a couple, Stickler and Tartick first sparked romance speculation months ago.
“Where’d you hear those rumors?” Tartick joked during an April episode of the “Scrubbing In With Becca Tilley & Tanya Red” podcast, adding that he was “keeping things a little bit more private” with his dating life. Although he didn’t confirm his relationship status at the time, he did sing Stickler’s praises.
“She’s very special, she’s awesome, she’s great,” he gushed.
Tartick met Stickler when she appeared on his “Trading Secrets” podcast in April.
“Are you flirting with me?” Tartick playfully asked Stickler in a clip from the episode shared via his TikTok page.
“I’m not flirting with you,” Stickler replied before facing the camera and asking, “Can we keep that on record?”
Tartick’s romance with Stickler comes less than one year after he and fellow Bachelor Nation alum Kaitlyn Bristowe called off their engagement after four years together.
“After sharing the news with family and close friends first, and taking the time to properly process it ourselves, we are saddened with heavy hearts to share that we have decided to end our engagement,” the exes wrote in a joint Instagram statement in August 2023. “We are thankful for all of you who gave us the time and space to process this life altering decision as there are many emotions and changes to navigate.”
Tartick and Bristowe, 38, added that they planned to continue their friendship and share custody of their pets.
“Our dogs Ramen & Pinot will continue to be cared for together as brothers. While their humans are no longer romantically involved, we will love and take care of them together,” they wrote.
Tartick admitted during a December 2023 appearance on former Bachelor Nation host Chris Harrison’s “Most Dramatic Podcast Ever” that he’d cried more since his split from Bristowe than ever before in his life.
“Kaitlyn meant so much to me and still currently does. … I just get so worried about the repercussions of what I say and I care, still, so much for her and it’s really, really hard for me to have these conversations,” he said, before saying “deteriorating complacency” contributed to their split.
While Bristowe hasn’t directly addressed Tartick moving on with Stickler, she got some comforting messages after the new couple went Instagram official.
“I’m having a hard day, it started this morning. I’m just having a hard day with some things and my girlfriend sent me a text saying like, ‘Just wanted you to know I’m thinking of you,’ [and] I’m like, ‘How do you know I’m having a meltdown?’” Bristowe said in a video of herself crying shared via her Instagram Story on Wednesday.
She continued, “I’ve had a couple people being like ‘I’m thinking of you,’ and I don’t know why. How the f—k do you guys know that I’m having a bad day? I’m, like, scared.”
Bristowe subsequently shared a video saying “now I get the messages,” seemingly implying that she’d heard about Tartick’s hard launch, and said she’d been “crying over dog stuff.”
Bristowe and Tartick met in 2018 after their respective Bachelor Nation appearances. Kat, meanwhile, was previously married to ex-husband Mike Stickler, with whom she shares 4-year-old daughter Mary Katherine (MK), from 2019 to 2021.
