Who Is Alayah Benavidez, One of Peter Weber's 'Bachelor' Contestants?

image by Katherine J Igoe
Sep 30, 2019

Potential spoilers for The Bachelor ahead. Peter Weber's Bachelor season has begun! And thanks to some early spoilers from group dates and one-on-ones, we already know some of the contestants who have the potential to win Peter's heart. We also know which contestants have already made a name for themselves for some of their pre-show activities, which is absolutely the case with Alayah Benavidez. She's a former pageant winner, model, and strong competitor for the final rose...but she also had a seemingly serious boyfriend until riiiight before she got involved in the show.

So, what do we know about her so far, and how long may she be in the Bachelor race?

She's from Texas.
Benavidez is 23 (lots of the women on Peter's season are young), and from San Antonio. She went to the University of Texas at San Antonio. She's a model, and worked as an orthodontic assistant to pay for her education; She apparently wants to get her PhD at teach at the university level.

According to her pageant bio, "her Read the Way program, which benefits local schools and literacy programs, is one avenue for her to constructively influence the lives of children." Also interesting: "While in high school, Alayah was diagnosed with dyslexia and told it was a disability...She turned her liability into the impetus 'to work smarter and strive higher' which propelled her into AP and dual credit courses."

She's a pageant winner.
Benavidez won Miss Texas USA in 2019. She also competed in Miss USA but didn't place. If you remember, pageant winners who just recently won but aren't able to present their crown to a new winner (Caelynn Miller-Keyes ran into this issue when she was filming The Bachelor in 2018) get into hot water. If Alayah does well—she's still on the show, according to spoilers—this might become a problem for her.

She was dating someone right before she auditioned for the show.
And the rumor, of course, is that she broke up with him to go on the show (it's happened before, but sometimes it can cause issues for the contestant). Reality Steve has screenshots from her account with him as her "pageant boyfriend," lugging things around for her.

Mader has a few posts up that speak to their previous relationship, like this one in March:

And this one where he's actually at Miss USA:

His account hasn't addressed the split directly, at least not in terms of his posts. There aren't many details at this point, but no doubt Bachelor fans are digging. Ironically, Peter was dinged for doing something similar...so now they have something in common? I dunno.

She's doing well on the show so far.
There was a recent group date that was called "Demi’s Extreme Pillow Fight" (I think the Demi in question is Demi Burnett from Bachelor and Bachelor in Paradise) and Alayah won the whole thing!

I don't know if that means she wins a one-on-one, but generally speaking, winners of group dates tend to at least get traction for the next few episodes.

We'll update when we know more.

https://www.marieclaire.com/culture/a29247815/who-is-alayah-benavidez-the-bachelor/