After opening up about her late husband John’s battle with pancreatic cancer on The Golden Bachelorette, Joan Vassos felt “the stars aligned” with the perfect opportunity to honor him.

“My family and I had been talking about how to honor John and we never could come up with anything that felt right — planting a tree or putting the name on a bench, all those things that people do to make their memory be more eternal, none of them seemed right for John,” Joan, 62, told Us Weekly during an exclusive interview. “And then when PanCAN approached me and said, ‘We heard your story on the show and we’d love for you to talk to us about joining our cause,’ it was perfect because it was exactly what John would’ve wanted. John was a very generous person and very giving and very philanthropic. And I thought, he would’ve given to this cause and want to help anybody not have to go through what we went through.”

Joan will be joined by her four adult children, grandkids, friends from all over and even strangers who joined her “It’s Just A Sprain” team at PanCAN PurpleStride charity walk in Washington D.C., on Saturday, April 26. Joan told Us that her fiancé, Chock Chapple, will not be in attendance.

“He was planning on coming, but I gave him the break. He still has a job and he is doing something in L.A. this week that makes it a little hard for him to actually take the whole week off,” she said, making it clear that Chock, 61, would be by her side if she asked him to.

Joan added that Chock has been “amazing” about her efforts to keep John’s legacy alive. (John died in 2021 at age 59 after battling pancreatic cancer for nearly a year. Joan and Chock got engaged on the November 2024 finale of The Golden Bachelorette.)

“He’s an incredible person and he is so understanding and wants me to do whatever I need to do,” Joan gushed to Us of Chock. “He is really conscious of my kids. This is a big thing that happened in their life and John’s legacy is still really important to us and will always be. He is so kind about it. And, you know, he lost somebody. He relates to this. He had been engaged for a number of years and he lost Kathy to a brain tumor. She was a big part of his life — maybe for not as many years — but an important person to him. He’s very understanding.”

Joan went so far as to call Chock “perfect,” adding, “I never ever have to worry about it affecting our relationship. Me spending too much time doing this or talking about it too much. He is amazing about it.”

The ABC star acknowledged that meeting Chock on The Golden Bachelorette allowed the twosome to get deep quickly.

“In the normal dating world, you have no time limit, so you don’t have to lead with, ‘This is how my spouse passed away or I am divorced’ or whatever. You don’t have to go with that heavy stuff, but it certainly needs to be part of the conversation because if a person isn’t good with that part of your life — I couldn’t have been with a person that didn’t, like, accept that part of my life,” Joan explained. “I was married to John for 32 years. I was with him for even longer. He is the father of my children, so he will always be a big part of my life. But that was a part that’s over here. It had a stopping point and I need to move on and live my life and it’s what he wanted. And he told me that right before he passed away. That was a great gift he gave me. He said, ‘Move on, don’t mourn me forever.’ It took me a while to actually accept that. I was like, ‘No, no, no, I’ll never do this again.’ But then I do realize I have a whole other life to live.”

Joan hopes that her relationship with Chock can be as lengthy as her 32-year marriage to John.

“I want to live life and I want to love again. I loved being married and I had a great marriage and so I think it makes me wanna do it again. Some people, it makes them not wanna do it again, It makes me wanna do it again,” she said. “It will just be different.”

While Chock won’t be with Joan at Saturday’s walk, she is confident she will feel John’s presence.

“I’d be so surprised if I didn’t,” she said, adding that her kids also help her feel close to John. As for her three grandchildren, Joan noted that “two of them are too young” but her grandson Boomer “definitely knows” about his “Pops” as the only grandkid who got to meet John.

“We talk about him — we don’t want John’s memory to fade away. Their parents are who they are because of this man that existed,” she said.

In addition to the walk, Joan wants to make sure people are aware of the risk of pancreatic cancer.

“Unless you get an MRI or a PET scan, there is no way to detect it. There’s not a blood test. It’s not an easy thing to do to find out if you have it. So it goes so undetected for so long that by the time people are diagnosed, they’re pretty far along and the cancer and then the treatment options aren’t great,” she said. “And the sad thing is there’s not a lot of research being done on it. First of all, the funding has decreased. [The pharma companies] none of them want to study it or fund research for it because they haven’t had a lot of success.”

As a result, donations are very important.

“I’m so lucky that I got to be in this position that I get to keep talking about him and about why I’m involved. It keeps his memory alive. There are so many people out there that have this cancer or may get this cancer. It’s on track to be the second leading cause of cancer related deaths in the United States, so this could be a real part of people’s lives,” she said. “And I don’t think that pancreatic cancer is like that on the forefront — you think about other cancers, breast cancer, colon cancer as the ones that are more prevalent. This is moving its way up on that scale and that’s scary.”

Joan concluded with a message from her kids.

“They said, ‘Mom, if every one of your followers gave $1, you’d make like $200,000. I would love it if every one of my followers gave $1” Joan said. “I know everybody is being pulled in a million directions, being asked to donate to things, but this is my turn. I’m asking to donate to this organization, pancan.org. It’s really important.”

PurpleStride will take place nationwide in nearly 60 communities on April 26, 2025, bringing together survivors, supporters, celebrities, and special guests to raise awareness and critical funds for pancreatic cancer — one of the world’s deadliest diseases.