Chris Harrison Bio, Age, Wife, Children, Net Worth, The Bachelor, Controversy

Chris Harrison Biography

Chris Harrison is a television and game show host from the United States best known for hosting ABC’s reality dating show The Bachelor from 2002 to 2021.

How old is Chris Harrison? – Age

He is 51 years old as of 26 July 2022. He was born in 1971 in Dallas, Texas, United States. His real name is Christopher Bryan Harrison.

Chris Harrison Family – Education

He is the son of Mary Beth Harrison. In 1989, he graduated from Lake Highlands High School. On a soccer scholarship, he attended Oklahoma City University. While in college, he was initiated into the Kappa Sigma fraternity.

Chris Harrison Wife – Children

Harrison married Gwen Harrison, his college sweetheart. Joshua and Taylor are their two children. Harrison and his wife announced their divorce in May 2012, after 18 years of marriage. Harrison was confirmed to be dating Lauren Zima, an Entertainment Tonight reporter and journalist, in 2018. In October 2021, they announced their engagement.

Chris Harrison Net Worth

He has an estimated net worth of $25 Million.

Chris Harrison The Bachelor

From 2002 to 2021, he hosted the ABC reality dating show The Bachelor. From 2003 to 2021, he hosted The Bachelorette, Bachelor Pad from 2010 to 2012, Bachelor in Paradise from 2014 to 2021, the first season of Bachelor in Paradise: After Paradise in 2015, Bachelor Live in 2016, and The Bachelor Winter Games in 2018. From 2015 to 2019, he hosted the syndicated version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.

Chris Harrison Photo
Chris Harrison Photo

Harrison announced his temporary departure from the franchise on February 13, 2021, after receiving criticism for defending a Bachelor contestant accused of racism. Alternative hosts for season 17 of The Bachelorette were announced in March 2021. Harrison announced his retirement from the franchise in June 2021, after 19 years.

Chris Harrison Controversy

Harrison, who has fronted Mike Fleiss’ The Bachelor and all of its lucrative ABC spinoffs since 2002, will receive his own rose in the form of a mid-range eight-figure payoff and promise to keep his mouth shut, I hear. When the agreement is made public later today, the usual platitudes are expected to be exchanged for public consumption, but there is no romance in the air behind the scenes.

While rumors of Harrison’s permanent breakup with the Bachelorverse circulated after it was revealed last week that Fleiss pal David Spade and others would be guest-hosting the next season of Bachelor in Paradise this summer, the specifics of the final split remained unknown until early this morning.

Harrison’s representatives have been engaging in increasingly intense negotiations over the past few days with WBTV and, to a lesser extent, ABC, which is owned by Disney, with the Bachelorette premiere as their event horizon.

After yet another flurry of back and forth between the parties and Bachelor broadcaster ABC, the confidential settlement with franchise producers and distributor Warner Horizon was finally reached. Harrison attorney Bryan Freedman’s pledge to launch the Shiva of lawsuits exposing a swath of The Bachelor’s alleged dirty laundry unless his Gersh-repped client emerged feeling the financial love was a motivational undercurrent, to use a metaphor.

When Deadline contacted them, representatives for ABC, WBTV, or Harrison did not respond with any response regarding the settlement. When we hear back from them, we’ll update. In an interview earlier this year, Harrison offered Bachelor contestant Rachael Kirkconnell a pass and “compassion” in response to 2018 photos that surfaced of the Season 25 contestant participating in an Old South slave plantation-themed fraternity formal. Harrison was kicked out of the franchise at that point. A strongly nudged and apologetic Harrison announced around Valentine’s Day that he would be “stepping aside” from the first season of The Bachelor in order to have a Black man at its core. This announcement came as the fallout from the interview and Kirkconnell’s racist barbed party rapidly grew.

On the March 15 Season 25 finale, Bachelor Matt James actually gave Kirkconnell the final rose with a rare absence of a proposal, highlighting the drawbacks of prerecording in this context. On the Emmanuel Acho-hosted After the Rose special that same night, James made it clear that he had cut things off with Kirkconnell as the antebellum South photos became public after the Bachelor production was finished. Later, the couple said they were trying to get back together. Harrison and the The Bachelor franchise are currently at odds. The extent to which Fleiss, WB, and ABC will be able to stabilize the franchise, if at all, is a question that the settlement does not address.