Emily Maynard Hopes Her Daughter Meets Her Future Husband At Church, Not On ‘The Bachelor’

Emily Maynard hopes her daughter doesn’t follow in her footsteps when it comes to looking for love on reality TV. The former Bachelorette star told Entertainment Tonight that after three ill-fated engagements she had better luck finding her future husband at church than in front of ABC’s cameras.

Maynard first appeared on Brad Womack’s season of The Bachelor and went on to headline her own season of The Bachelorette. Fans saw Emily’s failed engagement to Womack and Jef Holm play out before she left the spotlight and met her soulmate another way.

Emily Maynard was an easy fan favorite when she first turned up in Bachelor Nation in 2011. The young single mom’s back-story—that her fiancé, racecar driver Ricki Hendrick, died in a plane crash just a few weeks before she discovered she was pregnant with their daughter Ricki—resonated with fans. But after two failed Bachelor gigs, Emily Maynard found love with future husband Tyler Johnson at church in her hometown, far, far away from The Bachelor’s Makeout mansion.

Today, Emily is a mom of three—in addition to Ricki, Maynard and her man are parents to 17-month old son Jennings and 3-month-old son Gibson—but she recalls how she was cast on the ABC reality show five years ago.

“My girlfriend wrote in on the website and they called me, and I was like, ‘No, no, no,'” Maynard told ET. “I thought it was a prank call and then they read me this letter that she wrote, and it was like the nicest things anybody has ever said about me. I started crying immediately, and they were like, ‘We have to have her on the show. She cried on the first phone call. She is on the show.'”

Maynard admits that The Bachelorette gave her a platform, but she hopes that Ricki will steer clear of finding love on reality TV.

“I would beg her, hands and knees, ‘Please don’t do it!'” Emily said. “But at the same time, it’s her choice, but I would hope that she does not. I met my guy at church. Hopefully, she’ll meet him at church.”

Emily Maynard recently recounted her experiences in a book titled I Said Yes. But instead of positioning it as a tell-all, Emily said she wrote the book for God.

“I really did not want to put myself out there again,” Maynard told the Charlotte Observer earlier this year.

“But I just prayed about it, and I felt like this was God seeing something good out of The Bachelor and Bachelorette. I always knew that there was a reason I did it. Obviously it wasn’t to meet my husband – shockingly enough – but I felt like maybe God gave me the platform so that I could help grow his kingdom.”

In her book, Emily recalled that “church was an occasional event” when she was a child, but that her relationship with God strengthened when she met Hendrick. But after her fiancé died, Emily said she turned her back on her faith.

“You’d think I’d turn to God, but I didn’t, ” Emily revealed in her book. ” Not knowing where to turn, I started hanging out with a fast crowd that liked to have a good time. And in the process of trying to divert attention away from feeling empty, I made some foolish decisions, ones I am not proud of.”

Maynard revealed that she actually met future husband Tyler Johnson at Forest Hill church before she signed on to star on The Bachelorette. Emily and Tyler met when they were both volunteering as part of the church’s outreach program.

“I had seen him around church and knew he was an elder,” Emily revealed in her book. “He was very hard to miss because he was so, um, hot!”

“Before I was scheduled to fly out to Los Angeles (for The Bachelorette), Tyler and I were walking back to the car after our school clubs one Thursday night when I told him I was going on the show. He seemed taken aback. Before I drove off, Tyler said something like, ‘Well, let’s keep in touch as friends then, and if you’re not engaged when you get back, we can get together or something.'”

After her high-profile split from Jef Holm, Johnson texted Maynard to ask of she would tweet her 400,000 followers about an event he was organizing, and she agreed under one condition: That he take her out to dinner.

Emily Maynard admitted she still feels “a lot of shame and embarrassment” about doing The Bachelor, but says she wrote the book as a way to make something positive from it. And Maynard has no interest in continuing her 15 minutes of fame by doing any more reality TV shows, admitting, “This is very fleeting. I know I don’t have this platform because of any talents I have. I went on a dating show and that’s why this is happening.”

[Featured Image by Mike Lawrie/Getty Images for Benefit Cosmetics]