When Meredith Phillips was on The Bachelorette, the show was in its infancy. She was on the second season, so producers hadn’t managed to capture very much of the viewership from The Bachelor. This prevented Phillips from securing some of the celebrity future contestants would be able to find. This leaves some fans wondering what happened to her after the show.
Meredith Phillips before The Bachelor
Meredith Phillips was born in 1974, and grew up in Portland, Oregon. She admits to partying through high school, and when she attended Oregon State, she continued the trend. After she graduated, she briefly worked for a local modeling agency. On a whim, she auditioned for The Bachelor.
ABC’s producers cast Phillips for the fourth season, where she’d compete against 24 other girls to win the heart of Bob Guiney. While she and Guiney became friends, the two recognized early on there wasn’t romance between them.
While Phillips doesn’t blame the producers, she recognized in later interviews they enabled her to indulge her growing alcoholism. She was the third-runner-up on the show, but left on good terms between Bob Guiney and the rest of her competitors.
The Bachelorette
After leaving The Bachelor, the producers picked her to be the object of desire for the second season of The Bachelorette. Her season did better than the first, but still didn’t have the viewership that The Bachelor did at that point. She continued drinking through the run of the show, though never enough that it interfered with production.
Her stint on The Bachelorette ended when Ian McKee, an equities researcher, proposed to her. They lived together for a year, which helped Phillips limit her drinking. However, the couple cancelled their engagement in 2005, and she began drinking more than she ever had.
After splitting with McKee, she dated several people. In 2009, her father passed away after an unexpected heart attack, and her long-time partner Fritz Manger broke up with her.
Things finally stabilized for Meredith Phillips in 2010, when she began seeing her high school boyfriend, Michael Broady. She released Date Night Cookbook, a collection of recipes for doing in-home romantic dates.
In 2011, she married Broady, and briefly had the quality of life she had aimed for since graduation. Unfortunately, just six months later, her mother was hospitalized as part of on-going cancer treatments. Meredith Phillips moved back into her parents’ home, and relied on alcohol to deal with the stress of her mother’s illness.
This was when her alcoholism, by her admittance, reached its worst. She continued to ramp up her drinking until almost a year had passed. In 2012, her brother Matt finally intervened, organizing and paying for a stint in rehab. During her program, Phillips separated from her husband.
After about six months of sobriety, the couple reconnected, and Phillips moved back to Oregon to try and rebuild her relationship with Michael.
What’s Meredith Phillips Doing Now in 2018 – Recent Updates
Since her interview with People magazine in 2013, Meredith Phillips has essentially ghosted. She closed her public social media accounts, and hasn’t responded to any inquiries for follow-up interviews from Radar Online or TMZ.
Considering how closely her drinking habits seemed to be tied to her fame, that’s probably a good thing. It’s likely Phillips is keeping a low profile so that she isn’t distracted from building her family with Matt Broady. Last we heard, she was working on remodeling her home in Oregon, and doing some local modeling.