“I pulled out the booty shorts for you,” Gabby Windey teases when we meet for dinner at Taix in Los Angeles. Windey’s voice, often compared to those of Jennifers Coolidge and Tilly, is distinctively breathy, her syllables drawn out and her delivery disarmingly candid. She’s dressed in a style she’s christened “ciggy mommy” — leopard-print coat, slinky black top, silver hoops, French tips, and sheer black tights — and fresh off a call with her psychiatrist. “I opened the conversation today, like, ‘I’m always honest with you. I got Valium in Mexico, and I’ve been taking it.’ She was like, ‘Okay …’”
Windey’s “Xanned out Elle Woods” intonation has served her well in her four years on reality television. In 2022, the onetime Denver Broncos cheerleader completed the ABC ultramarathon: She was a finalist on The Bachelor season 26 (which aired January to March that year), co-led The Bachelorette season 19 (July to September), and took second place on season 31 of Dancing With the Stars (September to November). After The Bachelorette, she was briefly engaged to contestant Erich Schwer — but they broke up before she went on tour with DWTS Live in January 2023. She performed in 60 shows in three months. Then, in August, the star of the most hetero show on TV came out as queer on The View. Surprise!
“Apparently all the lesbians and bi girls loved me on Bachelor,” she explained on an early episode of her podcast, Long Winded. “It’s like everyone knew before me.” The status update — and her endearing relationship with ex-Hasidic queer comedian Robby Hoffman, documented for her million Instagram and over 700,000 TikTok followers — boosted Windey’s profile. Next thing she knew, she found herself in a castle in Scotland, competing on the great reality-TV clearing house The Traitors, a competition series that pits Bravo-lebrities and other celebs from lifestyle reality TV against seasoned “gamers” from shows like Survivor, Big Brother, and The Challenge. And while we don’t know yet if Windey wins the big prize, the game’s outcome doesn’t really matter — she’s already won countless new fans as the season’s breakout star.
Thus far, Windey has played a guileful game, flying under the radar while stealing the show in her confessionals. For anyone not watching closely, she may not seem like a threat; in an early episode, contestant Danielle Reyes remarked that Windey had done little so far but “look cute.”
“I’m always an underdog,” Windey says. “I was an underdog on Bachelor, too. People underestimate me, but there’s a lot going on upstairs.”
There is a conspicuously sexist dynamic on display this season, between the smug male gamers, every man being convinced they could innately steer a ship, and Tom Sandoval’s bafflingly ignorant presence. Windey’s deceptively ditzy cool-girl clique, the Bambis, took note. “I was always fighting with the men,” Windey tells me. For her, it was a somewhat unpleasant reminder of the real world — a throwback to her old life. Reality TV is “such a microcosm of society,” she says. “I forget, because I literally interact with no men. My manager and my dad are the only men in my life. So I forget that this is what it’s like.”
Windey was born in O’Fallon, Illinois, in a year easily found online, despite her best efforts (“I asked my publicist today, ‘Can you take my birthday off IMDb?’” she says. “They’re like, ‘Not if it’s factual …”). Her father was in the Air Force, so the family lived on the base nearby. Windey has an older sister, Jazzmin, but says their six-year age gap — and her parents’ divorce when Windey was 11 — meant that she spent much of her childhood living alone with her mother, whom she describes as manipulative and often withholding.
“I give her a lot of grace in that she had a terrible childhood, and history repeats itself,” she says. “She just didn’t know how to raise a kid. I was always afraid, and I was really lonely.” When discussing her mother, Windey is direct, if measured; it’s biographical information she’s made peace with sharing because she wants to be understood by her audience. It’s been eight years since they last spoke; she jokes that they’re “coming up on our ten-year anniversary.” Windey’s mother is Mexican, and their contentious relationship has complicated her connection to that part of her identity. Now, though, “I’m proud of it,” she says. “People in the Latina community will DM me: ‘We claim you. We’re proud of you.’ That means a lot.”
Growing up, Windey knew she wanted to be an entertainer. “I had a breakdown in the Kroger produce aisle,” she says. “I was telling my dad, ‘I want to be a dancer!’ He was like, ‘You have to go to college.’” Windey briefly considered journalism, having worked on her high-school paper. “Thank fuck I didn’t,” she says. “Journalists are so, like, absolutely nuts right now. Like, you can’t believe anything.” She catches herself immediately: “You’re a journalist. But you’re a writer. Not just a journalist.” She cackles. “Me, backtracking.”
Ultimately, Windey pursued nursing, like her mother before her. “My dad was like, ‘Be a nurse. You’re always gonna have a job.’” So after high school (where she was named “Miss O’Fallon” in 2008), Windey attended the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs, moved to Denver, and became a nurse at 21. “I had no life experience,” she says. “They didn’t care. I was smart and wanted to do good, but it’s traumatizing. I did the best I could, but it’s an impossible job for one person. I think there are a lot of ethical dilemmas in health care.”
Still, Windey kept at it for eight years. “I had every position: I was a charge nurse. I was a rapid-response nurse, so I would go to all the emergencies in every part of the hospital,” she says. “I was scared as fuck, but I was calm.” At the same time — having secured the professional stability her dad wanted for her — Windey fulfilled her childhood dream and became a dancer, cheerleading for the Denver Broncos while continuing to work as a nurse.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Windey became a FEMA nurse with stints in Los Angeles (where she met and began dating a DJ), Fresno, and small-town (“bumble-fuck”) Texas, working 80-hour weeks and night shifts, caring for patients on ventilators, and living from a hotel room. Then she went back to Los Angeles for the DJ.
“He played me like a fiddle,” she declares. “But I was like, This is it. This is it for me.” The picture she paints is uncomfortably vivid for any woman who has ever dated an emotionally unavailable, lightly unemployed man: “He lived in Ocean Park. I lived in Venice. He would booty call me in the middle of the day, and I would ride a Lime scooter over there. I was so desperate.”
When things fizzled, Windey reconsidered an opportunity she’d previously written off: The Bachelor. In 2017, Windey’s cheerleader friends had submitted her for the show. ABC was immediately interested, particularly because Windey’s application included a reference to having dated Bachelor Nation alum Dean Unglert (“Who,” she interrupts herself, “I’m currently blocked on Instagram from”) in college. Still, Windey didn’t return their calls, and that season went on without her. “I was living out my dream as a Bronco cheerleader,” she says. “And as a nurse, everyone was like, ‘Wow, you’re really doing something.’ I thought I was doing what I was supposed to do.” In 2021, Windey became the first woman and the first NFL cheerleader to win the Pop Warner Humanitarian Award (typically given to NFL players) for her work on the pandemic front lines.
But the confluence of COVID burnout, a dirtbag DJ, and a deeper ennui made Windey want to reapply for The Bachelor — and thus, a media personality was born.
Time flies in Windey’s company. When we sat down for dinner, the restaurant was empty; by the time we’ve split mussels in creamy leek sauce, a Caesar salad, roast chicken and fries, and a few glasses of white wine, the dining room is rambunctiously full, and two and a half hours have slipped away as easily as three and a third episodes of Peacock reality programming.
Windey almost didn’t join The Traitors; in fact, she first turned the show down. As anyone who’s watched even a few of her TikTok videos knows, Windey likes to spend time at home, where she can be depressed in peace. “My favorite thing, when I feel the most grounded, is to take two hits of a spliff and putz around the house,” she says.
Months after Windey initially passed on season-three casting, The Traitors won its first Emmy. They asked her again, and this time, she agreed. “But they won’t tell you who’s on the cast,” she says. “That’s something I’m learning with events I go to: I want to know the guest list. Make it worth my while.” (Windey adds that The Traitors casting director Deena Katz is “amazing and messy.”)
After back-to-back TV stints (and some choice sponsored content), Windey can now afford to do what she wants and skip what she doesn’t. Her primary focus at the moment is Long Winded, which she says has provided her with a platform to “scream about feminism” and her love for Sylvia Plath. While she sometimes features guests, her solo episodes are where her singular, often unpredictable train of thought shines. (“Sometimes I smoke weed beforehand,” she explains, which I admit was already pretty clear.) In a recent episode, she began with a fairly sound leftist critique of our government’s reliance on crowdfunding sites to address systemic disasters before positing that the Palisades wildfire could have started from an ember that shot across town after a laser-hair-removal technician “burned off” her clitoris. The transition is seamless.
Moving forward, Windey hopes to keep building her podcast’s following — up to a point. “I like having a niche audience, so I can be myself,” she says. “I really want to protect that.” She prefers recording solo, at home, without producers in the room; she’s not interested in becoming another Nick Viall. “I don’t want to turn into Call Her Daddy,” she says. “It’s amazing what she’s done, but I want [my show] to feel like it can happen at any time.”
After Windey’s exit from Bachelor Nation, she’s begun to reshape her audience accordingly. She’s “sure some pervert will come across” her account, but she’s delighted by the women who count themselves among her fans (“They say I need rescuing,” she purred in a recent TikTok. “Why? Because I’m gaaaAAYY?” She plays with her hair, then continues: “Nobody can save me from this rug-munching tree.”). And she loves when she’s recognized in public. “My Broncos cheerleading coach always told us, ‘Never say no to an autograph, because not everyone is gonna ask, and one day you’re gonna wish they did.’ That’s my mentality now.”
Windey’s ambitions beyond the podcast are wide-ranging, which she attributes to being a Capricorn, and include starring in a horror film (“Robby doesn’t like scary movies, but I want to watch The Shining; I just need to feel something”), posing nude (“I feel like it’d be so sick, especially since I’m a lesbian”), becoming a Real Housewife of New York in her 50s, and writing a memoir — though she’s not yet sure when. “I can’t write everything I feel until I’m dead,” she says. “I protect people. So right before I schedule my euthanasia — which I do plan on, because I like to be in control — I’ll publish.”
In the meantime, Windey is pretty content with how her life looks now. “I’m so grateful for my relationship with Robby and that I’m getting over the things that would keep me from being with her,” she says. (For this, Windey credits her therapist, Carol; her “very funny” psychiatrist and mood-stabilizing medications; and the couples’ therapist she and Hoffman started seeing three months in.) “Robby and I talk about how we’re okay with how much money we’re making,” she says. “I don’t know what I would do with more money.” Then again … “I would love to come from old money,” she adds. “I’m begging to come back as a nepo in my next life.”