‘Love is Blind’s’ Amy & Johnny on best date spots + the worst of Charlotte’s dating scene

The latest season of “Love is Blind” started out with 30 men and women from Charlotte — but only one couple tied the knot on Netflix’s hit reality dating show: Amy Cortés and Johnny McIntyre.

From the start, the pair had one of the strongest connections in the pods, as the first couple to say “I love you” and the first to get engaged sight unseen.

The two are still happily together, just a few months shy of their wedding anniversary.

After the full season aired, the two sat down with CharlotteFive to talk about how their new life as newlyweds has been — and why they think they were the only couple to walk away from the show together.

(Note: The conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity.)

C5: Coming up on your first anniversary … how has it been so far?

Amy: “It’s been so good. It’s been very busy for sure. We ended up moving together a couple months after we got married, around August, so getting situated there, and then we’ve also been traveling a lot. We have visited his family in Maine and then Austin. I think we went to Boston for a little bit, too … So we’ve kind of been everywhere to see his family, and then we also traveled with my family to France, as well, so definitely a lot of eventful stuff going on and just really enjoying the first year.”

C5: From what was shown this season, were there any big parts of your relationship that didn’t air?

Johnny: “Yeah … I feel like we had a relationship that was more so easy to kind of talk through. We did talk through a lot of things. Like it wasn’t any big blow up conversations. It wasn’t a lot of like intense fights. It was more along the lines of like, ‘What are the things you’re looking for out of this? What am I looking for out of this?’ — and then we just kind of talked through our relationship that way.”

Amy: “I will say, I was putting a lot of pressure on Johnny in those pods ‘cause I wanted to lay everything out there, and I just wanted to make sure that if he was going to get down on a knee, it was for a reason, and he knew everything. So, I had told him about my brother, but I also come from like a big family and my dad is the main provider because my mom is not able to help out a lot because a language barrier and all of that, so we have a lot of elderly family members at home that I also have to help take care for, as well and that was a huge thing too …

“I told him if like something happens to my dad, not only would I also be a legal guardian for my brother, but I would also have to help out heavily with my family, and I would want my husband to also lean in there, too. And that’s a lot to ask of somebody, and it’s something that he really had to think through, and I feel like it speaks a lot to his character because he still was like, ‘Yeah. I mean it’s worth it.’

“But I feel like that was an ongoing conversation for sure, and just the different lifestyles that we came from. I’m more of like going out and having fun, and he’s more of an outside guy, like loves to hike and all that and I’m not about that life so it was really was just like meeting in the middle and doing a little bit of both but I felt like that wasn’t really that big a deal. I thought, if anything, it was a balance.”

C5: “Looking back at the beginning of filming … did you ever expect to be where you are now as a couple?”

Johnny: “Not even close … I was not expecting to be on the show at all … I was like, ‘Cool to be on this, but you know what … I’m really just gonna try to learn a lot about myself in the process and try to figure out why previous relationships weren’t amounting to something more …

“By day four or five, that’s when we were like, ‘Hey, we’re just gonna date each other. Like, I don’t want to see anybody else. I’m not here for anybody else. Let’s see really how far we can take this,’ and that’s exactly what we did.”

Amy: “I feel like we both kind of came from similar backgrounds where we weren’t going to do it, and we didn’t really have any heavy expectations, and then it just kind of like flowed seamlessly. But I feel like that was the beauty of it because we didn’t really like — obviously we wanted marriage — but we weren’t like, ‘I’m gonna end this with marriage,’ and it’s like if it didn’t end like that, I think like it would have been fine. We would’ve known it wasn’t meant to be, but I feel like we weren’t like firmly grasping on that. We didn’t force anything, and I think that’s why it all played out the way that it did.”

C5: This season started out with 30 men and women, but you were the only ones who walked away with a marriage. Why do you think that is?

Amy: “Honestly, I’m not sure. I feel like the odds were really in our favor … It really kind of depends up who ends up choosing who, and then like, the dynamics within like each individual because there might be some trauma that might be unhealed and they don’t realize it until they’re actually making something as serious as marriage work … I feel like there could have definitely been more of an outcome, but I feel like everybody took that — at least most people that I know — took that experience very serious, and they gave it their all and they just didn’t find their person. So maybe it was just that there was not a lot of compatibility there or if there was, it was just not enough to get to that next step.”

Johnny: “I feel like for me a big thing was, you could tell just like when we were hanging out like in the lounge, the other 15 guys — I can’t speak for the girls now — is that a lot of them were very much, ‘This is like the way. This is my way of doing it this way, and no one can tell me otherwise’... kind of like in a one track mind.

“I feel like the reason why me and Amy actually worked out well was because we wanted to change our mindset towards different things like … towards different people, seeing different things from viewpoints, having different perspectives on things that we really never thought too much about, and I think that’s really why it worked out well for us because we’re both able to really see each other kind of where we started as opposed to just being like stuck on one specific topic and not getting past that.”

C5: “Based on everything that’s unfolded this season … do you think it is reflective of Charlotte’s dating scene?”

Johny: “I think that people in Charlotte want to date so they don’t have to be by themselves and I think that’s probably the worst way to go about dating. I think dating shouldn’t be just, ‘Hey, I don’t want to be alone so I’m gonna try find somebody else to just not be alone with’ …. and I feel like going into like a relationship, you have to do the work internally to find out what you want out of a partner and become that person.”

Amy: “And I feel like that’s not just a Charlotte thing. It’s unfortunately, like, our generation is very scared of commitment — and that’s because a lot of us saw how other generations within our family might have gone about relationships, and so I feel like we tread carefully but we also tread too carefully. And it’s just finding that middle ground of, ‘Hey, like, let go and actually let love come to you,’ rather than like force it or be too scared of it.”

C5: “What are your go-to date night spots in Charlotte?”

Johnny: “There’s a place called Thai House in the University area … and it is really good.”

Amy: “We go to Pho NoDa …We just really love our Asian food … Another top place that we love to go to because we love our tacos is Tacos El Nevado on Central. It’s my favorite taco spot in Charlotte, and I put him on and he’s obsessed.”