Joey Graziadei Wanted ‘DWTS’ Partner Who Was in ​​’Healthy Relationship’

Joey Graziadei had one request when joining Dancing with the Stars.

The former Bachelor — who popped the question to fiancée Kelsey Anderson on season 28 of the ABC dating show — revealed on the Almost Famous podcast that he wanted stop the rumor mill before it began when it came to his partner on the dance floor.

“It was something I thought about coming in,” Graziadei, 29, explained. “I wanted to be in a situation where I was comfortable that I didn’t have to worry about a lot of this noise. So, I asked when I got on the show to be paired with someone that was in a successful and healthy relationship.”

“I didn’t want there to be any chance of noise on this because I know that comes with the show and the territory sometimes,” he recalled.

Graziadei shared that he didn’t want the show to affect him being in “such a great place in my life with everything that Kelsey and I have built that I didn’t want to have a distraction.”

Elsewhere in the podcast, Graziadei and his partner Jenna Johnson, who welcomed son Rome with husband Val Chmerkovskiy in January 2023 — noted they weren’t surprised by fans’ speculation about their connection on the dance floor.

“We knew coming in as a Bachelor Nation thing,” he shared. “I think it’s understandable that people are paying attention to my relationship always, and it was something that Kelsey and I talked about. I made sure before doing this that she was comfortable with putting that into the world again.”

“I think that we were more surprised that people couldn’t step away and understand the situation of the relationship I was in, the relationship that Jenna was in. We were kind of hoping that people would be a little bit more aware of that, but we weren’t necessarily surprised,” he added.

Graziadei was clear that there was nothing romantic between the pair, saying, “We want to be able to connect and have what we have on the dance floor and have this friendship and trust with each other without this assumption of something that we would never be doing.”

As for Johnson, she noted, “I think it’s very obvious that my relationship is known on the show. I mean, I have a child [and] my husband’s on the show as well and I thought, you know, people would obviously know that Joey’s engaged.”

Last week, Anderson responded to online comments about her fiancé’s proximity to Johnson with a hilarious jab about how she “won the Super Bowl ring” after vying for Graziadei’s heart on The Bachelor last year. She also asked fans to cool it with the jealous commentary.

“So many people are like, ‘Kelsey, why is Jenna touching your man like that?’ And honestly, I don’t know… Maybe because it’s her job? Maybe because she’s a professional dancer and she has to touch him to dance? I don’t know, that’s my understanding of it,” Anderson said in a TikTok posted on Sept. 19. “I’m just so tired of everyone being like, ‘Kelsey’s so strong, I could not do this, I could not watch this if I was Kelsey.'”

“Let’s do a little recap here. Do y’all remember how Joey and I met? We met on The Bachelor. He was dating 31 other women while he was dating me, and I won the Super Bowl ring,” she joked. “I have to have a certain level of security to go through all that, and Joey and I are still together and strong after a year of all of that craziness. Joey also has to be the type of man to give me the…reassurance that I need and deserve in our relationship. So we are all good in the hood.”

Anderson joked that if she can “survive” dating the former Bachelor alongside other women then she “can survive watching him dance with a married woman with a cute little baby boy.” She then added, “I am very proud of Joey, I think that everyone should be. He is killing it.”

Johnson commented on Anderson’s post, writing, “That’s my girl right there 😍😍,” to which she replied, “😚 😚 😚 .”

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Dancing with the Stars airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on ABC and Disney+, with episodes available to stream the next day on Hulu.