Once upon a time, a physical therapist from Miami accepted ABC's wild proposition: Would she like to spend six weeks weeding through a couple dozen potential husbands and commit to forever with one at the end?
Trista Sutter (née Rehn) had more or less tried out for the inaugural season of The Bachelor for the right reasons after seeing a commercial on TV. "I was like, 'Travel? Meet people? Let's do this!'" she recounted to E! News last year. "I thought it would be a fun experience so I applied online."
And having fallen hard for businessman Alex Michel, she was confident that given the chance to do the picking, she would leave with her perfect match.
Eleven months after her season debuted in January 2003, some 17 million viewers watched her wed her final rose recipient—sweet firefighter-slash-amateur poet Ryan Sutter—setting a 19-years-and-counting franchise gold standard that is still strived for today.
Because 21 leads and countless glasses of champagne and red rose boutonnieres later, Trista and Ryan are one of just four Bachelorette couples to make it from the final rose ceremony platform to forever (pour one out for Ashley and J.P.!).
It's an average that season 20 Bachelorette Charity Lawson hopes to improve upon when she begins handing out the roses June 26.
She's already tapped Becca Kufrin, Michelle Young, Rachel Lindsay and Kaitlyn Bristowe for advice and was met with "reminders of staying true to myself," she told E! News in an exclusive interview, "which was obviously not something that I needed to hear, but from them, knowing that that was also their experience and something that they took away from their time as Bachelorette was huge."
But before we watch the Georgia-based child and family therapist—and her attractive older brother Nehemiah—attempt to remove the thorns from her bouquet of hopeful husbands, can we steal you for a sec?
Because we're checking in on all the series' previous leads and offering a heartfelt "cheers" to their success.