Julia McGuire may be new to the whole reality TV star thing, but she's already nailed the whole "keeping your private life private" thing. As one of the few newbies in the Bravo show, Julia immediately peaked everyone's interest, but just because she's entering the Bravolebrity world doesn't mean she wants to share everything with the fans. Exhibit A: Julia McGuire's boyfriend, who is mentioned a few times in Winter House.
From the jump, Julia established that she didn't come to Winter House to hook up in the hot tub, telling the audience that she left a boyfriend back home. "I'm going to miss him, I think these two weeks. But I feel like I'll be distracted and have fun," she told Paige in the season premiere, noting that she and her unnamed BF were "good." Her official Bravo cast profile confirms she's off the market, declaring, "Julia is in a committed relationship." But who exactly is she in this alleged relationship with?
Looking at Julia's Instagram, it's not exactly easy to find evidence of a romance. A photo from June 23 featuring her lounging at a romantic picnic in the arms of a tan silver fox is captioned "< dating a greek." But other than another photo of her trip to Greece with this mystery man, he doesn't appear anywhere else on her page. In both photos his face is angled away from the camera, making it difficult to get a read on his exact features. And he's not tagged in either pic, despite Julia's habit of tagging literally every possible brand.
Starting at her Instagram page, I decided to expand my search beyond those two images, but came up empty. So, I turned to Phase 2 — aka going through her tagged photos — in the hopes that either her boyfriend or a friend had posted a better photo of the two of them together. Unfortunately, going through a working model's tagged photos is difficult, especially when Julia seems to specialize in the kind of modeling that almost looks like a regular Instagram post, but with better lighting. Still, I persisted.
Clicking on random tagged photos and seeing who else was tagged is a strategy that led me to one potential candidate, Mike Puma, founder of the Gotham Burger Social Club.
Puma's personal Instagram is private, but he frequently posts on the Gotham Burger Social Club profile, and I have to say there are a few similarities between him and the guy in Julia's photos. The only snag in this theory: the wedding ring Puma is wearing in multiple photos. Julia isn't married, and I'm going to assume she wouldn't be reckless enough to post couple pics with a married man on her public Instagram with 16.5K followers. (Though, fun fact: Puma and his co-GBSC founders appeared behind the bar on Watch What Happens Live in 2015.)
So, I'm sad to report that Operation Find Julia's Boyfriend has, for now, been unsuccessful. Hopefully as the Winter House season progresses, we'll learn more about this Greek man Julia's so "good" with.
Image: Zack DeZon/Bravo