Sara Carton and Joey Leveille may not have been a couple on season 8 of Love Is Blind, but the cast members came out of the pods with a connection of their own.
On Sunday, July 13, Sara and Joey debuted their ’ship with a joint Instagram post, which showed them on a rooftop, kissing for the camera. “Happy 🥹. My newest life chapter title,” the caption read.
Their relationship came as a shock to fans of the Netflix reality series, who watched them explore relationships with other people during the season. “😮 so it’s trueee LIB works just not on camera lol,” one fan wrote, while another added, “Wait a darn minute!!! I’m gonna have to go rewatch this season. 😂😂.”
In case you need a refresher: Joey was originally coupled with Monica Danús and made it to the altar on the eighth season of Love Is Blind, but they decided not to go through with the marriage.
Sara also made it out of the pods with her original partner, Ben Mezzenga, but later called off the wedding. Though Ben asked if she would want to explore their connection off the show, she stood on business when it came to her decision.
“If you’re going to say no to that [marriage], why even continue the relationship?” she told People during an exit interview. “That’s been a theme of mine where I know in the past, my past relationships, I know that this person isn’t my person, but oh, maybe they can change, or maybe there was potential there. I can see us growing together. And I didn’t want to continue the cycle of that.”
Sara and Joey’s hard-launch comes after Sara denied she was dating Joey during an episode of The Viall Files in March. “To be clear, me and Joey are not dating,” she said, later adding, “I don’t know what the future will hold. I definitely have no capacity to even think about a relationship.”
Then, during a May appearance on the Dear Shandy podcast, she clarified that they weren’t “dating officially” but that they were exploring their relationship. “To keep it short and concise right now, a lot of people think of dating in different terms, so to keep it clear, dating officially—like boyfriend-girlfriend—we’re not,” Sara explained at the time. “We are dating in the sense of exploring our relationship and getting to know one another.”
As for their exes, Monica and Ben, who sparked dating rumors of their own? Sorry to report that those two actually are just friends. On the Girl Please podcast back in April, Ben said of himself and Monica, “We’re not intentionally trolling, just having fun making content together and just letting the world take it as they want.”
