News & Politics

We Internet Stalked the “Love Is Blind DC” Cast So You Don’t Have To

Real-estate agents and Cancers and Baltimoreans, oh my.

Are they playing Washingtonian's Love Is Blind DC drinking game? Photograph courtesy of Netflix.

Since the DC season of Love Is Blind was confirmed two weeks ago, we’ve been anxiously awaiting the first batch of episodes to drop on October 2. To kill the time, though, we engaged in some good old-fashioned data analysis on the close-to-home contestants.

In addition to some fun facts, like how esthetician Brittany Wiesniewski published a book on how to stay in cancer remission (the first chapter is titled “I Am Choosing to Remain Cancer-Free”), or that Tim Godbee hosted his own podcast in 2020, we saw some trends among the 29 singles headed to the pods. Here’s what we found:

 

A fifth of the cast doesn’t even live in the DC area.

Jason Drecchio, Tamar Smith, Katie Bollinger, Dylan Maddox, and Marissa George all list Baltimore as their hometowns in their Instagram bios. Wiesniewski, while not openly calling herself a Baltimorean, has a story highlight dedicated to the city and has posted from Canton Waterfront Park and East Baltimore. She also co-founded the nonprofit Hands On HIIT, which won an award from the Baltimore City Council in 2022 for its cleanup of the Canton Waterfront Park.

We’ve said it once and we’ll say it again: Baltimore is not in the DC area. Save it for next season.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Tamar Smith (@tay2themar)

 

More than 75% of the cast has a college degree

Following the trend of DC, Maryland, and Virginia being among the most educated parts of the US, 23 out of the 29 contestants have at least finished an associate’s degree. Seven (George, art dealer Leo Braudy, consultant Ray Pottebaum, Washington Post social media editor Nina Zafar, Garrett Josemans, Ashley Adionser, and Taylor Krause) have a JD, a PhD, and five masters degrees between them. Ten cast members are alumni of area universities—including George Washington, American, UMGC, George Mason, Johns Hopkins, Virginia Tech, Towson, Norfolk State, College of Southern Maryland, and Morgan State.

Four contestants—Bollinger, Tyler Francis, Nick Dorka, and Nick Pugh—were also collegiate athletes. And a fun fact: Ally Dawson holds a BFA in Acting from Boston University, one of the most competitive theater programs in the country. We hope she’ll put that skillset to use for the cameras this season.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by •MARISSA• (@rissa.george)

 

Four contestants work in real estate.

Between both Nicks, the suburban Washington market is covered—Pugh is a broker at Scheer Partners in Rockville, while Dorka works for Long & Foster in Northern Virginia. Perry Slomnicki is an agent at Artifact Homes in North Bethesda (his Zillow bio notes that he “enjoys playing basketball” in his free time—we know, Perry). Up in Baltimore, Dylan Maddox works for Compass as an agent. We imagine that everyone in this cohort will be charming, persuasive, and good at negotiating. These traits should prove helpful in their dating pursuits.

 

Nearly a quarter are military veterans.

Bohdan Olinares and Stephen Richardson both served in the Marine Corps, while George, Godbee, and David Romero have backgrounds in the Navy. Francis was in the Army, and Pottebaum graduated from West Point. While only a handful of this season’s participants live in Northern Virginia, the cast’s Arlington is showing.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Bohdan Olinares (@bohdango)

Randomly, five are Cancers…

…which doesn’t seem important, but it’s weird that it’s that many, right? Our astrologically inclined colleagues tell us this means there might be a lot of crying this season.

 

More contestants work in the suburbs than in DC.

Only around a third of the singles actually work in the District—12 out of 29 work at companies based in the suburbs, like Josemans, who is a quantum physicist at IonQ in College Park.

 

Only three people work close to politics.

Washington’s signature industry is lightly represented in this season. Krause is an energy policy consultant at a nonprofit, Adionser works for political trade magazine Campaigns and Elections, and Godbee currently does public affairs for ICF, a consulting company that has worked with several federal agencies. Fine, but we wanted hillterns. Damn you, security clearance!

Molly Szymanski
Editorial Fellow
Kate Corliss
Editorial Fellow