All she wanted was to find real love on the 2025 season of Married at First Sight, but instead, TV bride Katie Johnston is still trying to heal from the trauma of being body-shamed by her groom on national television.
Katie’s match, Tim Gromie, famously faced a furious backlash from viewers of the show after he was filmed telling a producer that he had wanted a “short petite blonde” as a bride and delcared to Katie there was no “spark” between them – leaving them sleeping separately on their wedding night.
In another episode he asked Katie: “What would be your number one thing you want to do today?”
“Should we strip off nude and run around the forest?” his bride replied, to which Tim quipped, “You do it, and I’ll just put the blinds up” – a response that saw viewers of the show brand him “foul”.
Now, as a new fat-shaming scandal is being pitched as a hook for the upcoming season 13, Katie’s candidly sharing her personal experience in a bid to show the toll such “toxic” comments can take on one’s mental health.
“After that pattern in my life, showing up again and again, that’s just repetition of humiliation,” Katie tells Woman’s Day about the hurtful situation she found herself in.
“I think I went into self protection even more so and withdrew from even the desire to pursue love. It’s not that I don’t want love — I just don’t feel safe putting myself out there because I always think, what if they’re being pleasant to my face but then going ‘WTF?’ behind my back, like what happened on TV.”
The 60-second trailer for the new season already has people talking about the impending drama, but it’s groom Chris Nield’s comments about his potential match that has angered many viewers, Katie included.
“If I turn around and see a short, overweight blonde girl I’m gone,” the groom says in the trailer.
Katie believes it’s “irresponsible” of the show to even give this kind of comment airtime.
“I think it’s absolutely disgusting they let someone like that through the gate again,” the 39-year-old says. “It is extremely damaging to have people like that, not just for the recipient or the potential match, but for conversations as a whole. MAFS is a massive platform and to have this toxicity out there again, knowingly, is horrendous.”
She adds, “Body shaming, it’s not about preferences, it’s about stripping someone of their humanity and turning that person into something to be evaluated rather than be understood. It’s just not healthy at all.”
Understandably, it brings back painful memories of Katie’s brief time being ‘married’ to Tim, who said he wasn’t physically attracted to her and she wasn’t his “usual type”.
“When I went in there [to the experiment], I was already working towards wellness and being healthy — I really did want that for my life because I’d gone through some massive trauma for the last few years, I had really let myself go physically, and then I was on the mend and working on becoming the healthiest, most well version of myself again,” Katie recalls.
“And meeting Tim and getting rejected because of that just discarded all my growth and all of my intention. It set me back.”
For future seasons, Katie is hopeful that producers will do better and steer clear of using damaging body image issues as plot lines. In the meantime, she’s taking positive steps in her own body-acceptance mission.
“I’m still on my health and wellness journey, but now it’s about self compassion and grace – it’s not fear or shaming or trying to earn respect by shrinking myself,” she says.
