It’s not the usual way to meet the family, but when Evelyn Ellis was sent to Sydney to present a segment of Aussie travel show Getaway, she figured it was time to get to know her boyfriend Duncan James’ sister Renee over a meal of Korean barbecue.
“There’s a time and place to meet the in-laws – why not do it on television?” the former Married At First Sight Australia bride laughs. “She’s lovely. I think the first thing I said to her was, ‘You look like Duncan with long hair. Like, you’re Duncan with boobs and long hair!’ Good-looking genes run in the family, I tell you.”
The job was Evelyn’s second gig with the travel show, but the 27-year-old insists that when she went on MAFS, she had no ambition of scoring a role as a TV presenter.
The couple is happily planning their future.
“To tell the truth, I’m overwhelmed and extremely grateful with how everything’s turned out,” she admits. “I’m pinching myself every day.”
Evelyn – who grew up in Sydney but spent years in the UK working as a model and appearing on Big Brother – says she went on MAFS because she had a feeling “something great” would come out of it.
“Duncan and I spoke about this quite a lot. As crazy as it sounds, we really did have a feeling in our bellies we were going to meet someone.”
Being an intruder on MAFS, Evelyn got to see a photo of Duncan, 36, who married Alyssa Barmonde, before she started filming the show.
“It was him shirtless on his balcony with a Santa hat on and I thought, ‘Ooh, he’s a bit of all right!'”
But for Evelyn – who married Rupert Bugden on the show and “genuinely did try” to make the relationship work – it wasn’t just about Duncan being “extremely attractive”.
Evelyn married Rupert on the show.
“In my industry, you meet attractive people every day,” she says. “It takes so much more to have something so real and find a connection. I think Duncan and I really found that in each other, which is the part that still blows my mind.”
Evelyn and Duncan went public with their relationship in May, something she says was “scary”. But it was a decision they put a lot of thought into.
“Of course, I see a future with Duncan, otherwise we wouldn’t have put ourselves in this position so publicly,” she explains. “It forced us to have those really serious chats quite early on.”
Evelyn reveals she “definitely” wants kids and she wants to have them “in the near future”. She says, “I want to be a young mummy. I’m an only child, so I come from a very small family and didn’t exactly have the white Christmases and over-the-top traditions. That’s something I want for my life and my kids.”
But she’s found love with Duncan!
As for the other MAFS brides and grooms, Evelyn says it’s hard to stay close to all of them.
“I probably talk the most with Rupert and Janelle [Han], now that Janelle’s moved to Sydney,” she says. “But we check on other castmates here and there – I check on Melinda [Willis], Sandy [Jawanda] and Claire [Nomarhas] to make sure everyone’s doing OK. But there’s a lot going on.”
For Evelyn, her focus is on her new television career. She says she’s really enjoying presenting, although she admits she’s “not perfect” at it and she suspects Duncan would be better TV talent than she could ever be.
“I’d love to see him hosting sports or something,” she tells. “Even though I’m not interested in sport at all, he would make me watch sport, let me just put it that way!”
Beyond Getaway, Evelyn says her dream job in TV would be to front a dating show. “I watch a hell of a lot of reality TV, so I’d love to kind of go full circle one day and host something like that.”
