Are Joey and Kariselle Still Together? The Full Story of Perfect Match’s Most Beloved Couple

Are Joey and Kariselle still together? The short answer is no — Joey Sasso and Kariselle Snow ended their engagement shortly after Perfect Match Season 1 wrapped filming, and have confirmed they are no longer in a romantic relationship. But the longer answer is considerably more layered than a simple breakup. Their story spans years before the show, an unexpected proposal in a Panamanian villa, a painful post-filming split, and an ongoing effort by both to preserve the friendship that survived everything else. It is, in many ways, more honest and more human than the love stories that do end in wedding bells.

What makes the Joey and Kariselle relationship compelling beyond the reality TV packaging is the pre-existing history, the genuine emotional investment both brought to the Panama villa, and the frank way both have spoken about what went wrong — and what was never wrong at all, just unable to survive the transition from paradise to real life.

Who Is Joey Sasso?

Joey Sasso was born on December 13, 1993, in Rochester, New York — a city known not for entertainment industry glamour but for hard work, community loyalty, and the kind of upbringing that builds character over time. He was raised by his parents Anthony and Maria Sasso alongside his sister Milan in a household where discipline and authenticity were expected.

From the age of six, Joey was performing plays in his local community theatre. He attended The Aquinas Institute — one of Rochester’s most respected private high schools — where he excelled in both theatre and athletics. He was a nationally ranked boxer, played multiple sports, and starred in 8 out of 10 school plays during his high school years. One month after graduation, at eighteen, he moved to Los Angeles alone to pursue acting.

His early years in LA were spent on commercials and building his craft under experienced mentors. His first film credit came with Sinister 2 in 2015. He later appeared in multiple episodes of ABC’s General Hospital and worked on several independent productions. He has been developing the independent film Young Lion of the West — in which he plays Nick Donato, a New Jersey club promoter — for approximately eight years, co-writing, producing, and starring in it. The film released in 2024 to strong early ratings.

Joey won the first season of Netflix’s The Circle in January 2020, earning the $100,000 prize and the national profile that came with it. He played the game entirely as himself — a choice that, on a show built around the option to be anyone, stood out immediately and earned him genuine fan affection.

Who Is Kariselle Snow?

Kariselle Snow was born in December 1995 and raised in East Hanover, New Jersey — a suburban community in Morris County known for its tight-knit character. She grew up knowing she wasn’t entirely heterosexual, coming out to her first boyfriend at age thirteen and carrying that self-knowledge with her through her teenage years in a conservative family environment that made those conversations complicated.

She briefly attended college to study communications with early ambitions toward law, but did not finish her degree. She subsequently worked as a nightlife host and an NFL cheerleader, building a life that balanced performance, community visibility, and a growing social media presence.

In August 2020, Kariselle was crowned Miss New Jersey United States — a title she pursued explicitly to represent the LGBTQ+ community in pageant spaces that had historically lacked that visibility. She went on to compete in the Miss United States Beauty Pageant. The crown was not decorative for her. It was a statement.

She is also a musician, having released original singles including Love is Her, and posts covers and original material to her YouTube channel. She made her television debut on Netflix’s Sexy Beasts in 2021 — appearing disguised in full panda prosthetics as “Kariselle the Panda” — and previously competed on Season 8 of MTV’s Are You the One?, the first fully gender-fluid season of that series.

Before Perfect Match: A History That Predated the Cameras

One of the most important and frequently overlooked facts about Joey and Kariselle’s relationship is that it did not begin on Perfect Match. It began before the show — through a prior connection that Kariselle, in her own words on the show, described with evident frustration: “He looked me straight in my face and told me he’s in love with me, literally said he was going to marry me one day, and I fell for it.”

Their pre-show history was described publicly as a situationship — an emotional connection with romantic intent that never quite committed to itself. Joey has acknowledged his role in that instability, pointing to his own reluctance to fully commit as a central factor in why their earlier involvement stalled before it started. They came to the Perfect Match villa, then, not as strangers discovering each other for the first time, but as two people carrying unresolved feelings toward someone they already knew — and already, in some measure, still wanted.

Perfect Match: The Villa, the Connection, and the Proposal

Perfect Match premiered on Valentine’s Day 2023, bringing together alumni from across Netflix’s reality universe into a luxury villa in Panama. Contestants paired up, went on dates, and competed to prove they were the strongest couple in the house while new singles periodically arrived to test established connections.

Joey and Kariselle matched on the very first night. What followed over the course of filming was a stability that stood in contrast to almost everything else happening in the villa. Kariselle had a brief connection with Too Hot to Handle contestant Chase DeMoor while on the show — one of those engineered temptations the format introduces — but returned to Joey. He, meanwhile, expressed interest in no one else during filming, telling Netflix’s Tudum that there was no one who caught his eye throughout the entire shoot.

With approximately one week left in filming, Joey called Kariselle’s father. He called his own parents. He organised a proposal quietly, keeping the plan from every other housemate. In the finale, he got down on one knee. Kariselle said yes.

Host Nick Lachey told the couple their relationship reminded him of the beginning of his own marriage to Vanessa Lachey — a reaction visible enough on camera to signal it wasn’t scripted. Despite the genuine warmth of the moment, Joey and Kariselle did not win the show. Dom Gabriel and Georgia Hassarati were declared the Perfect Match by one vote. Neither Joey nor Kariselle appeared to feel deeply about the result. They had what they thought they came for.

The Breakup: When Real Life Replaced Paradise

Within months of filming wrapping — before the show even aired — the engagement ended. Joey has spoken about this with notable candour.

He told Netflix’s Tudum: “We love very hard, so the highs are high, and the lows can be very low. At this point, we just know that we’re probably better apart, but that we really want to try to work on our friendship.”

Kariselle echoed the same sentiment, describing the pattern of their relationship with a hand gesture — high, then low, then high again, then a steep drop — and saying simply: “We just couldn’t get it back.”

He told Variety: “Relationships in general are extremely difficult… We both had the best of intentions, but we have a lot of differences that separate us with the things that we want and the way that we feel about each other. That chapter of my life is over.”

He also directly addressed the cynics: “Not being together shows how real it was because, let’s just be completely honest, if we were going to fake it, this would be the time to fake it — while the show’s airing. I’m not a person who’s going to fake something for a show.”

The Controversy: Francesca Farago’s Accusations

The breakup did not play out entirely in private. Perfect Match cast member Francesca Farago went public on the Almost Adulting podcast with claims that Joey had ghosted Kariselle after the split and had treated her poorly. She described Kariselle as heartbroken.

Neither Joey nor Kariselle responded directly to those comments. Joey has since told Variety that when he and Kariselle have issues, they deal with them directly between themselves — without allowing third parties to speak negatively about either of them. Whatever the specific nature of the split’s most painful moments, both have since arrived at a position described publicly as cordial and mutually respectful.

Where Joey Sasso Is Now

Joey has channelled his post-Perfect Match energy into his acting career and his sobriety advocacy. In 2024, he released Young Lion of the West — a film approximately eight years in the making, co-written, produced, and starring Joey as Nick Donato, a Rochester-connected club promoter navigating a rival business conflict. The film received strong early audience ratings and represents the most substantive statement yet of his ambitions as a filmmaker and actor.

In November 2024, he marked four years of continuous sobriety — a milestone he shared openly on social media. He has spoken about a period in his life when anxiety and personal pain increased his reliance on alcohol and substances, and his willingness to discuss that journey publicly has made him a meaningful voice for sobriety within the Netflix reality community. His advocacy is personal, not performative.

He posts regularly about his family — his parents Anthony and Maria, and his sister Milan — a consistent thread of warmth that grounds his public persona in something real and enduring. His romantic life since Kariselle has been kept private. He has said he has dated but does not intend to share that publicly: “I have dated. I have talked to people. I have had those experiences, but I just don’t want to put that out there for the world.”

Where Kariselle Snow Is Now

Kariselle returned to the full range of what she was before the cameras found her: pageant competitor, musician, LGBTQ+ advocate, and increasingly visible screen personality. She has continued competing in pageants, earning runner-up finishes and special awards while explicitly framing her participation as representation for the queer community in spaces that rarely see it.

Her music career has continued, with original singles and covers released to her social media platforms. She appeared in The Better Sister (2025) on IMDB, suggesting continued screen work. She has attended major cultural events — Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour among them, as a dedicated Swiftie — and maintains a following across Instagram and TikTok that reflects genuine audience affection rather than celebrity-adjacent attention.

She has not publicly confirmed a new romantic relationship.

What Their Story Actually Tells Us

The Joey and Kariselle story sits in a genuinely interesting space within reality TV relationship culture. Most such pairings are dismissed as either fabricated from the start or simply too artificial to survive real life. Their relationship challenges that framing — not because it lasted, but because of how it ended.

Both acknowledged the love was real. Both acknowledged it wasn’t enough. Neither blamed the format or the cameras. The most precise description came from both of them simultaneously: the highs were very high, the lows were very low, and eventually they couldn’t get it back. That is a description of real love — imperfect, intense, and ultimately finite. Not a reality TV story. Just a human one.

Conclusion

Are Joey and Kariselle still together? No — but what they had was genuine, and what they have now is something rarer than most reality TV relationships manage: mutual respect and the foundation of a friendship they are both actively working to preserve. Joey Sasso — the kid from Rochester who moved to LA at eighteen, won The Circle, made his own film, and has been four years sober — is building something lasting. Kariselle Snow — Miss New Jersey, NFL cheerleader, panda on Netflix, queer advocate, and musician — is doing the same. The Joey and Kariselle chapter closed. The stories continue.