“If you didn’t know they were working on a TV show, you’d think they were together.”

Standing side-by-side on the red carpet at the 65th TV Week Logie Awards in August 2025, The Golden Bachelor host Samantha Armytage and the show’s star Barry “Bear” Myrden oozed glamour.

Sam, 48, was dressed in cream organza for the occasion, in a Cappellazzo Couture gown that wouldn’t look amiss at a wedding.

Bear, a 50-year-old widowed father of three from Sydney’s Northern Beaches, looked dapper, meanwhile, in a black suit and bow tie.

Onlookers declared that Sam appeared “radiant” – with friends and fans taking to her Instagram page to describe her look as “sooooo beautiful” and “reminiscent of Grace Kelly”.
Sam Armytage looked radiant alongside The Golden Bachelor star Barry ‘Bear’ Myrden at the Logies. (Credit: Getty)
Insiders in attendance at the Logies even joked that it was perhaps Bear himself who was making the star so content.

“On the red carpet, they looked chummy, and even a little bit smitten,” one onlooker told New Idea. “There was chemistry. If you didn’t know they were working on a TV show, you’d think they were together.”

Indeed, Bear himself did nothing to dampen the flames of speculation when he told TV Week on the red carpet, “Sam is absolutely beautiful. I was tempted to give her a rose many times.”

“She was a fabulous mentor. She told me just to relax. It was inevitable that someone would have to go home [each week], and she told me, ‘Well, this is part of it. ’ It was tough, but I was very grateful to have her there.”

Indeed, mounting speculation over the chemistry between Sam and Bear has reportedly led Channel Nine to assist in arranging weekly catch-ups between Bear and the lady he finally chooses in The Golden Bachelor, before the finale airs.

“It’s been a very expensive and carefully managed roll-out,” a source told Daily Mail. “They want the public to believe in the love story.”

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Other insiders have poured cold water on suggestions that the rapport between Sam and the show’s star is anything other than purely professional.

“It’s just good TV,” a production insider told Daily Mail, describing Sam as a “pro” who knows “exactly how to play the part”.

Of course, Sam is currently single, having confirmed her split from husband Richard Lavender in December 2024 after four years of marriage.

“Yes, Richard and I have separated. All breakups are hard, but it’s somewhat lessened by the fact that it’s amicable and we wish the best for each other,” Sam said in a statement at the time.
Sam announced her split from husband Richard Lavender in December 2024. (Credit: Instagram)
Infrastructure Engineer Bear, meanwhile, lost his wife Audrey to a “very aggressive malignant brain tumour” in 2011.

After rejecting an offer to be Australia’s Golden Bachelor “one, maybe two times”, Bear told our sister publication TV Week he then decided “you only live once, and it’s never too late”.

“It was an incredible experience. It’s something I thought I would never have thought I’d be a part of it,” he told the publication.

“It probably was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done in my life, too, having to choose one of these beautiful women. “

“It was a very hard shoot. I worked so hard, everyone worked so hard. It was long, long days [shooting], but it was wonderful.”