Thursday, March 12, 2020

DC ExtraTime: From Boy Next Door to AYTO Heartthrob

BY DC CUEVA                        
■ @DC408DXTR  @ IG/YT/SC/TB

By the time we graduate high school or college, we all get asked of where we would be in five years. For a lot of you, you might've answered being in a good high-paying job, or being married with kids, or having that dream job. And for others, there's the fame of being on reality television, and all that goes along with it.

Credits from left: Seventeen, MTV, @CouturesWorld
In what will soon be seven full years that this site has followed MTV Reality, DCBLOG has featured people just like yourselves who were cast to entertain us each week on the likes of The Challenge, Ex On The Beach, the Shore franchise and the like. And during this time, we have had the chance to follow the entire run of Are You The One?, which we have rolled with since it premiered six years ago as MTV's first entry into the modern-day iteration of the romantic reality dating genre, and has made "Truth Booth" and "Boom Boom Room" part of our MTV vocabulary.

The series has produced many memorable cast members: ultimate perfect match Amber & Ethan Diamond of Season 1, many times Challenger Tori Deal & Season 4 castmate (and rookie Challenger on next month's Total Madness) Asaf Goren, Derrick Henry and Taylor Selfridge of Season 5, and the iconic Season 3 cast that has produced several Challengers stars and the representative of this show and The Challenge in the Teen Mom universe, Cheyenne Floyd. And we can't forget about the one who made a huge splash at last year's World Series for baring it all in Julia Rose of Season 4.

But perhaps, there is one person who can lay claim to the title of being the heartthrob of this franchise -- one who hasn't as of yet followed Tori, Devin Walker and others to suit up to compete on The Challenge, yet has made a solid impact on social media for fulfilling a remarkable transition from a young boy next door to being part of an Are You The One? cast, to now being more than just a man, but a social media darling by making an incredible transformation completely different than when we saw him on MTV. It is certainly the case for a man from Boston named Andrew Couture.

Most Pictures Courtesy Twitter @CouturesWorld





Back when Vine was the rage seven years before TikTok took over that mantle of 10-seconds or less video fame, this was how a then 19-year-old Andrew was entertaining a then smaller following on social media when Instagram and Twitter were just starting to gain steam in the early part of the 2010's. It took all of six seconds for young Andrew to pull out a classic trick of years past: spitting out water that came to him from his ears.
   What made Vine so great back then was that anyone could become famous for a tiny & small fraction of what the great Andrew Warhol once preached that anyone could become the biggest thing on earth for only fifteen minutes. Another Vine video Andrew made was of doing something that the guys of Dude Perfect were just warming up to do back then: making trick shots.


As this post goes out in the year 2020, it means one thing: the Summer Olympics are scheduled for late July and early August this summer (provided that things don't get out of control because of the current panic that's taking place right now). For so many of the sports contested there, it represents its once every four year exposure to the broader sports world, and it represents the biggest showcase for the sport known officially as "athletics," but known popularly in America as "track and field." In Europe, it is a big deal with meets held throughout the summer... but in the country that boasts by far the most Olympic medals in that sport, it only gets the big attention during the Games.
   Glance over at Andrew's earlier pictures on his Instagram and Twitter, and around photos of his abs, you'll find someone who is an avid track fan, and still to this day is sprinting at top speed several years after he graduated college. And there's also videos of him doing the standing box jump going up to as much as six feet above the gym floor, as well as the time he went 21 miles per hour on the treadmill - a top speed for the world's greatest sprinters in a video gone viral.










Five years ago, a 21-year-old Andrew tasted national fame for the first time when he was chosen by Seventeen Magazine not because of his track prowess, but for something way more cuter than that. They made him part of a feature in both the magazine and on its site starring "10 Hot Guys With Puppies (And Good Dating Advice)," and where he got cuddly with an adorable young dog.
   In his part of the Q&A, Andrew reiterated his passion on Instagram for fitness which netted him his growing following. But he answered questions where he saw a girl saying "I" so much being his biggest turn-off, of how guys like him don't know if they do something wrong, and the time where he opened up a box from a girl that had twenty "Open When" letters written by inside.
   Andrew's ideal dating scenario was being in one where it take most of any one's time where he answered, "I don't want someone who will bring me down. I think the best relationships are ones where you motivate each other to go after everything you want in life."

Three years later, Andrew would get a chance at love: this time on MTV on Season 7 of Are You The One?, where the key figure star of that season was not him, the twenty-one other suitors who were unlucky in love or even host Terrence J.: it was the "Fate Button," which determined which couples would be paired together to go on dates and then go into the Truth Booth, and it turned out to not produce as many worthy candidates to go up against the lasers during that summer in Hawaii.
   Andrew's MTV.com bio read the following: "At first glance, Andrew is a larger-than-life Boston "bro," but beneath his big personality is actually a professional marketing analyst who is a total romantic and family-oriented guy. Unfortunately, women don't seem to appreciate his softer side, so Andrew plays up the bad-boy persona even though that's not really him. Will Andrew recognize that the woman for him is the one that accepts him for who he really is and now who he thinks women want him to be?"
   Unlike the key figures of that year's quest to go 10 for 10 and $1 million (or in this case, 11 for 11 with twenty-two romantics), Andrew was largely in the background as those like Brett & Nutsa, Kayla & Cam and future Ex On The Beach exes Kenya & Tevin -- though his facial expressions were a fixture of this 2018 season. But late in the season when the house was in turmoil when they were going nowhere in the game -- which they would eventually do avoiding a money-losing matchup blackout to ascend into "eleventh heaven" and win the seven figures, Andrew became the voice of reason and chimed in to sum up the mood of the whole house.
   He vented in the confessional, "Bro, what the hell is going on? This house is insane - people popping off on each other left and right. All this fighting is just making it worse for everyone."




But if he didn't get that much screen time in the Season of Fate, then what has happened afterwards has become the big show. While his season was airing, Andrew was simultaneously growing a beard and darkening his hair, which he would show off at the season-ending reunion. At the same time, he was preparing for a transformation that would turn him into someone totally different from the Andrew who was flexing those abs in the AYTO house.
   A move from his native Massachusetts to a more favorable year-round climate down in South Florida by way of a new job opportunity by South Beach was just the start. And those who follow his Twitter account @CouturesWorld began to notice the first inklings of this new boy turned man when this picture below was retweeted in the three figures along with another viral post of an MTV Andrew and a South Florida Andrew... the winds of change were just starting up.














A post shared by Andrew Couture (@andrewcouture) on







By the summer of 2019, Andrew had officially become made his transition from that boy next door to an AYTO Heartthrob: gone was the baby face, and in came someone who was truly become a man in every sense. And it seems every time he posts something on social media it becomes noticed by everyone -- regardless of whether they watched him on his lone MTV series.









A post shared by Andrew Couture (@andrewcouture) on












A post shared by Andrew Couture (@andrewcouture) on










When we rang in the new year & decade two months ago, Andrew's picture of his two-year transformation became shared virally on Twitter, all as he began to feature more in his posts his perfect match, girlfriend Dominique. And it was just recently that the couple started their own YouTube channel where he has gotten to her makeup and tried on some spicy noodles... and dished on how they met.

















Yes, there have been so many notable alumni from Are You The One? who have made waves in the six years since it premiered. But it has taken us this long for us to finally find that one who can lay claim to becoming that eye candy for the girls to obsess with and for the guys to dream that they can be like that one. We've found that "one" in Andrew Couture.

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