Sean And Catherine Lowe From 'The Bachelor' Are Foodies To The Core

When Catherine Giudici saw Sean Lowe on Emily Maynard's season of "The Bachelorette" via her TV, she was smitten. A year later, the Seattle native landed a spot on "The Bachelor" as a contestant competing for Sean's heart. For her introduction, producers wanted her to ride in on a unicycle. Instead, she exited the limo, walked up to the man of her dreams and said, "Meet me inside for a dance" — something she now finds embarrassing considering nobody's dancing in the California mansion.

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"My first impression of her was, she's super cute and kind of giggly," Sean told The Daily Meal during a recent press opportunity as part of an upcoming Subway promotion. "She had this energy about her where I knew I wanted to spend more time with her. I want to hang out with this girl. I don't know much about her, but I want to hang out with her."

The Lowes have been happily married for five years now, living in Dallas with their two sons, 2-year-old Samuel and 8-month-old Isaiah. While the baby's primarily eating pasta (because it fills him up, which makes him sleep longer), Samuel has an appetite for whatever's on the menu for Mom and Dad. Catherine commandeers the kitchen though, while Sean promises a trade-off of doing the dishes.

"I love to experiment with anything we have in our pantry or in our fridge," Catherine said. "I'm always trying to think of, like, how to make it into something. So I always have to find a protein, a carb that goes with it and then a vegetable."

Filipino, Italian and Thai foods made from scratch are just a few of her culinary specialties. Prior to her career as a graphic designer, the now 32-year-old worked in a Thai restaurant and blogged about vegan fare for the The Seattlite.

"Really any food is so exciting to me because the seasoning is so different for every cuisine and it just gets me so excited," she said. "I love talking about food, I love making food and he [Sean] loves eating food."

What he doesn't love is picking up all the sticky rice Samuel spills on the floor, he says with a laugh. Every Saturday morning, the father-son duo have a sweet tradition of walking down the street to Top Pot for apple fritters and chocolate and blueberry cake doughnuts. Coincidentally, the bakery launched in Catherine's hometown of Seattle before expanding to Dallas.

As far as date night goes, the couple enjoys going out for casual Tex-Mex or a nice dinner at a steakhouse. They both like their meat cooked medium-rare. Anything above that "is a sin," Sean jokes. Ideally, the meal would end with a warm chocolate chip cookie baked in a skillet with ice cream on top.

When they're just relaxing at home — watching murder documentaries or the Smithsonian Channel, depending on who has the remote — takeout options typically include pad thai or pizza.

"We're so embarrassing with pizza," Catherine says, to which Sean reveals, "We order Dominos a lot. I think Dominos is great. Their pan pizza is awesome."

So what's on top? For Catherine, it's mushrooms and olives. Sean is aware his order is slightly controversial. The 35-year-old says, "A lot of people have a hard stance on pineapples, but I'll do Hawaiian."

Apart from risky pizza toppings and the fact that they met and fell in love on TV, the Lowes are refreshingly normal. He calls her Gaya (a nickname given by her family) and Mama, and she calls him Daddy — "in a sweet way, not a creepy way," she insists, because of their kids. The only complaint Sean has about his wife is that if she tries on 10 shirts, instead of hanging them up, they'll all go on the floor. Girl problems, right? And Sean's bad habit is that he... uses too many Q-Tips?

"People tell me it's bad, but I don't care. I have to use a Q-Tip on my ears every time I get out of the shower. Every time," he said. "Because I can kind of feel the water in there if I don't. People always tell me how terrible Q-Tips are, but I love them."

"How many people are you getting out of the shower with to tell you that Q-Tips are terrible?" Catherine asked, to which Sean replied, "I've had a few tweets about my love for Q-Tips and inevitably, people tell me they're awful."

Another bad habit, he adds, is that he just won't let up with the super-cheesy dad jokes, "especially if I can tell it's just starting to aggravate her. It's a lot of puns. I think dads enjoy puns, but sometimes I think it just starts to get under her skin."

Funny enough, Catherine's familiar with pun usage, too. On Sean's season of "The Bachelor," she famously slipped him a note that said, "I'm vegan but I like the beef." Now, she uses similar sayings on cards made by her stationary brand, Lowe Co.

Anyone who has ever been in a relationship knows that those aren't real problems. But that doesn't go without saying there weren't challenges to overcome after stepping out from in front of the camera.

"She had to give up her life in Seattle, move away from friends, family, work," Sean said. "Any time you meet in an unorthodox way and you're kind of melding two lives together, it's going to bring its own set of challenges, so in the beginning there was a learning curve."

Piggybacking off of that, Catherine said that after moving from Seattle to Dallas, "you don't know the people you're hanging out with, you don't have a lot of friends in your new city, so there are definitely a lot of factors that can bring about conflict in relationships. That's why it's so hard to keep a relationship from the show because you really don't have anything going for you except your own love, and maybe that's enhanced because of the circumstances. You're thrust into this real-life situation and are like, 'OK, figure it out,' and you don't have the assistance that hopefully you would've thought you might have. It's really just about committing, and that's why we're together still — because we decided we would be together and that was just the end of it."

In addition to being committed and overcoming the obstacles that come with great change, both Catherine and Sean are aware of and grateful for how loving and compassionate they are. Sean's favorite quality about his wife is not her shiny hair, her pretty face or perfect lashes. It's how big her heart is.

"When she cares about someone or something, she really cares about it on such a deep, intense level," he said. "I don't have that, personally. I would say most people, 99.99 percent, do not have the ability to love as deeply as she loves. So that's a testament to her love, not a knock against me. It's really, really impressive."

Similarly, Catherine points to her husband as a genuinely caring person. When they were filming "The Bachelor" together, she took note of how Sean knew the entire production crew by name.

"He knew everybody's names and was very respectful of them," she said. "Knowing that's how a person treats other people — it's so sweet and it's like, I look up to that in him. You see that in a partner and you're like, 'Wow, you're a good person.'"

For anyone who's thinking about sending in an application for an upcoming season of "The Bachelor" or "The Bachelorette," Catherine says it's important that it be a supplement to your life instead of banking everything you have on the opportunity.

"You can tell when people want to be famous and when they want all these perks from the show. They might get voted off the first night, then you're going to be really humble after that," she said. "So the way I thought of it is, I have a great life. This is just a really fun experience that I'm getting to have and to kind of think of it as a supplement and not as your only way of living."

Sean's advice? Just have fun.

"Back when we were on it [the show], Instagram wasn't nearly as big of a thing as it is now. So people weren't doing it to make money on Instagram ads after the show, so it's probably a different beast now," he said. "But it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You might be able to travel the world and do a lot of cool things you wouldn't experience otherwise, so just have fun."

If you are single, but the limelight (and potential drama) isn't quite for you, don't sweat it. Sean says to "be patient and try to enjoy the chapter of life that you're in. Marriage is awesome and it's fantastic and so rewarding and things like that, but being single has its advantages. I can look back on my 20s when I was single, and I spent a lot of time with friends and it's just a different chapter and that chapter's also fun. Don't be in a hurry to rush to the next chapter. Enjoy the chapter you're in."

"Enjoy your family while you can and doing things on your own time, because now, you have to think about the other person, you have to think about your children, and of course that's amazing, but go be selfish and go travel and experience life," Catherine added. "It's so much fun when you get to do things by yourself and have something a little more to bring into a relationship like more worldly experiences and a different outlook."

To experience one of "The Bachelor" franchise's most beloved couples in real life, fans can feel the love on February 14 when the pair will appear at Subway's Ultimate Valentine's Day Experience from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Omni Hotel in Dallas, Texas. Tickets are currently sold out, but there's an option to sign up for the wait list for free. The event serves to promote the chain's Meatball Marinara and Ultimate Spicy Italian sandwiches on cheesy garlic bread.

After the event, the couple literally has no other plans to celebrate the commercial holiday. They just really love food, so the timing and nature of the partnership works. If you want to treat your sweetie to a nice dinner at a chain restaurant, give it all you've got with these 20 places offering dope V-Day Deals.