Bachelor Nation’s Serene Russell Credits Us for Her Relationship With Brendan Morais

Bachelor Nation’s Serene Russell is giving Us Weekly credit for unknowingly playing matchmaker for her and Brendan Morais.

“You’re telling me if I didn’t fly to LA for one night to go to the Us Weekly event (I never do that) I wouldn’t have met him??” Russell, 29, wrote alongside a Sunday, April 27, TikTok video.

The clip, which was set to Lorde’s song “Ribs,” included a video montage of Russell as she was headed to Us’ Reality Stars of the Year Party back in October 2024. In Russell’s TikTok, she showed clips featuring her hanging out with fellow Bachelor Nation alums Morias, 35, Susie Evans, and Ivan Hall at the star-studded event.

The event was held last fall to honor multiple reality stars, including Kyle Richards, Jenn Tran, Leah Kateb, Lindsay Hubbard, Kristen Doute, Monica Garcia, Taylor Frankie Paul and more.

Six months later, Russell and Morais shocked fans when they hard launched their romance on Instagram. The post included a carousel of images of the pair coupled up and was captioned with a simple white heart emoji.

Several members of Bachelor Nation took to the comments to express their joy for the couple.

“My people,” Hall replied, while Justin Glaze shared a trio of clapping emojis and Danielle Maltby noted that Russell looked “so happy.”

Fans got to know Russell from Clayton Echard’s season 0f The Bachelor, while Morias appeared on Tayshia Adams’ season of The Bachelorette. Morias later made headlines for his romance with Pieper James, which occurred before they went on Bachelor in Paradise season 7 in June 2021.

During their BiP stint, Morias insisted that his relationship with James was “super casual” while also pursuing a connection with Natasha Parker. When James arrived at the beach, she claimed that they were dating without “labels.”

Morias and James ended up leaving BiP together after facing backlash from their fellow contestants. Us later confirmed in October 2021 that the pair had called it quits.

Russell, for her part, appeared on the following season of BiP where she met Brandon Jones. The twosome ended up getting engaged. However, Russell and Jones called it quits after a year.

“After many months, today we have ultimately decided to end our engagement,” the pair wrote in a joint May 2023 Instagram statement. “We have tried to work privately on our relationship which has been incredibly challenging in the public eye. This has been immensely hard to accept and painful, as there is a lot of love between the two of us.”

Russell later claimed in October 2023 that Jones had been unfaithful, which he vehemently denied.

“Now that I’ve had a moment to digest, I want to clear the air and respond with my truth. To be transparent, before leaving for Texas, my partner and I made the difficult choice to go our separate ways,” Jones said in a statement denouncing the accusations. “As this was a public relationship, we both decided to hold off on sharing the news until we mutually felt it was time, so we [just] shared the news with family and friends. … Unfortunately, during this time of private separation, coming back from Austin, a video [of myself dancing with another woman] came to light, that while harmless, made my ex-partner upset.”