From reality TV to real-life fairy tale. After navigating tragedy and handing out roses, Emily Maynard Johnson found The One in Tyler Johnson.Before her time in Bachelor Nation, the North Carolina native was engaged to NASCAR driver Ricky Hendrick.
Following his untimely death in a plane crash at age 24, Maynard Johnson learned she was pregnant. She gave birth to daughter Josephine Riddick “Ricki” Hendrick in June 2005.“We were mad at each other.
And it didn’t end well. I had no idea that that would be the last time I would see him,” she wrote in her 2016 memoir about her late fiancé. “For days after the crash, I wish I’d died, too. … I just kept on looking forward to June 29th because that was the day I got a piece of Ricky back.”Seven years later, the former event planner won Brad Womack’s season of The Bachelor.
The twosome called off their engagement in June 2011, several months after the finale aired.“You see it on TV. And there’s this … beautiful music playing.
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