“The Bachelor” contestant Katie Thurston went from bank marketing manager to reality TV star after first appearing on Season 25 of the show. She quickly became a fan favorite and, in 2021, she was chosen to be the star of “The Bachelorette” Season 17. Unfortunately, she didn’t find lasting love on the series and later admitted that “The Bachelorette” greatly impacted her mental health, and she began taking antidepressants after the show.

Advertisement

Eventually, Thurston was able to move past the difficult experience and, in March 2024, she inadvertently manifested her future love. It was March 22 when she saw a clip of stand-up comedian Jeff Arcuri that she found particularly funny. Sending it to a friend, she cheekily captioned it “Future husband.” Little did she know how right she was. The duo soon connected on Instagram, then spent hours talking on the phone before finally meeting in person that May. Wasting no time, they got engaged in August and tied the knot the following March — and yes, their wedding date was the one-year anniversary of the day they met. 

However, their special day took place under the shadow of a difficult health diagnosis, as Thurston learned she had breast cancer just a few weeks earlier. These are the sad details of Katie Thurston’s diagnosis.

Advertisement

Katie Thurston had no history of breast cancer and was told she did not have the BRCA gene (a gene that increases the risk of cancer, especially breast and ovarian) following a 23andMe DNA test. With that information in mind, when she first felt a small lump in her breast, she thought nothing of it. As the pain came and went, she would find reasons to dismiss it, telling “GMA,” “It was sore and as women we’re used to being told like, ‘Oh, it’s probably their time of the month,’ or ‘Oh, it’s from working out,’ so I brushed it off for a while.” As the lump didn’t disappear, she began to think that maybe it was a benign cyst, as she’d once had one removed from the same breast. Even after she looked up breast cancer symptoms every woman needs to know, she concluded there was nothing to worry about because she felt pain which was uncommon. It wasn’t until about four months later that she finally decided to see her doctor.

Advertisement

The lump Thurston initially thought was nothing proved to be stage 3 triple positive ductal carcinoma, a cancer located in the breast’s milk ducts. “As a 34-year-old woman, it’s just, you’re not prepared,” she stated on “GMA.” Due to the tumor’s large size, she was informed she would need to undergo chemotherapy to shrink it before surgery could be considered to remove it. “You’re on, like, survival mode,” she confessed. “You show up, or you die.”

On February 15, 2025, Katie Thurston took to Instagram to tell fans she had breast cancer. In a lengthy essay, the former “The Bachelorette” star shared intimate details of her diagnosis and revealed she had spent the previous two weeks on an emotional roller coaster, working her way from anger and sadness through to a determination to get better. “This first step of acceptance of my reality was the hardest,” she revealed. “But I am ready to fight this.”

Advertisement

Thurston went on to thank her husband, comedian Jeff Arcuri, for his unwavering support and admitted to feeling jealous of other couples who were able to celebrate Valentine’s Day in a romantic way. “Jeff took me to Hawaii and after, we were going to travel the world before planting roots together in NYC finally,” she mused. “Instead, my Vday was spent coordinating a place to live as I have to go back to LA for more testing and treatment.” Even so, she said she was now feeling ready to tackle the disease head-on and noted how reading others’ stories helped her find her own strength. Because of that, Thurston vowed to be transparent about her own journey in the hope of helping others.

In March 2025, two months after revealing her cancer diagnosis, Katie Thurston said “I do” to Jeff Arcuri in a private ceremony in their backyard. With only their parents and their pooch, Charlie, in attendance, the pair got married by a friend before heading to dinner at New York City’s Da Andrea restaurant, per Us Weekly. As Thurston told the outlet, she and Arcuri were planning a big wedding after getting engaged in August 2024, but that all changed following her diagnosis. “We don’t know what the next year looks like,” Thurston shared. “One night he said, ‘I want to show you that I still love you and that I’m here to stay. I’ll get married to you tomorrow.'” Arcuri also had a secondary, more practical reason for pushing up the nuptials. “I want to be able to be in the hospital with her and just be like, ‘My wife’s in there,'” he explained. “There’s more power to that.”

Advertisement

And while Thurston said she still planned to have a big bash after she was in remission, she shared just how much the gesture meant to her. “It was this kind gesture of him saying, truly, in sickness and in health,” she mused. Indeed, the couple spent the following day in hospital, trying to make the best of a hard situation. “Honeymoon at Columbia [Presbyterian Hospital] with some mocktails,” she captured an Instagram Story of them cheersing before treatment, per Us Weekly.

From the moment Katie Thurston revealed she had breast cancer in February 2025, she’s kept her promise of being an open book and has been bravely honest about her breast cancer. In the aforementioned Instagram announcement, she vowed to take followers along on her journey with the goal of inspiring other women to follow the advice she had learned the hard way: “Be proactive, get checked out.”

Advertisement

Outlining her schedule for a single morning, “The Bachelorette” alum revealed how multi-faceted such a diagnosis really is. In addition to booking a slew of appointments, including biopsy, mental health, and surgery, she was also researching insurance coverage and discussing treatment plans with her doctor. Walking folks through every step in detail, Thurston posted numerous Instagram Stories to document the process, starting with her first-ever mammogram and breast ultrasound. Those were followed by multiple biopsies to determine the stage of her cancer and viable treatment options. In addition to taking a toll on her mental health (Thurston admitted to crying at each appointment), the biopsies were also physically painful for the reality TV star, causing her to ask for stronger numbing and the ability to hold her husband’s hand during testing.

Advertisement

A CT scan was next on the list and, ultimately, Thurston said she knew she would need to have chemotherapy and was already considering undergoing a mastectomy.

Katie Thurston thought she didn’t want to have kids, but that all changed when Jeff Arcuri walked into her life. “One day you meet the man of your dreams and would do anything to make sure we can start a family in the future,” she told fans in an Instagram Story, per Us Weekly. Knowing that chemotherapy could potentially decrease her chances of conceiving naturally, Thurston decided to freeze her eggs in March 2025 before starting treatment. Sharing the process online, she told followers it required three pills and three shots a day, plus drawing blood every other day. Luckily, while it was labor intensive, it didn’t put too much strain on her finances. Thurston posted a snapshot of her bill to Instagram (via Us Weekly) and revealed that while one of her daily shots would normally cost $24,349, she was only paying $70. “As someone with breast cancer, a lot of my fertility treatments will be covered in the state of New York,” she explained. Ultimately, Thurston and Arcuri were able to complete the IVF process successfully and froze six fertilized embryos.

Advertisement

In addition to the fertility treatment, Thurston was also considering motherhood when discussing the benefits of a lumpectomy versus a mastectomy with her doctor. Given that she one day hopes to breastfeed her children, she said she would love to keep her left breast, as long as it showed no cancerous cells.

Katie Thurston and Jeff Arcuri moved from Los Angeles to New York City on March 1, 2025, to begin executing their care plan. Following a successful fertility treatment, the former star of “The Bachelorette” was ready to begin chemotherapy in order to shrink the tumor in her right breast before undergoing surgery to remove it. However, rather than opting for standard treatment, Thurston told fans on Instagram in mid-March (via Us Weekly) that she had chosen to take part in the I-SPY clinical trial. “The goal is to match treatments to patients based on the molecular and genetic characteristics of their tumors instead of a ‘one size fits all’ route,” she wrote in an Instagram Story.

Advertisement

As the trial’s authors explain, “[It’s] designed to improve outcomes in high-risk breast cancer patients by testing new drugs” in the first phase of treatment, ahead of surgery. In Thurston’s case, that included receiving shots of a hormonal therapy medication called Zoladex, as well as several rounds of chemotherapy. During one of the injections, Thurston took to Instagram (via E! News) to share the emotional toll she was experiencing. “Do I cry too much?” she asked her followers.

When doctors first examined Katie Thurston’s breast cancer in late February 2025, they concluded that it was confined to her lymph nodes and had not metastasized or spread to other parts of her body. Unfortunately, just a month later, that good news had changed, as doctors found two lesions on her liver which posed a cause for concern. Taking to Instagram (via E! News), the reality star offered a heartbreaking update on her condition, telling fans she had to temporarily stop her treatment in order to undergo further testing.

Advertisement

Speaking about her doctor’s initial reaction, Thurston shared, “She seemed to be leaning more on the cancer in the liver vs. optimistic.” She was quickly scheduled for a biopsy which would determine whether or not the spots were indeed cancerous. As Thurston further explained, if they were, that would confirm that her disease had spread, which would take her diagnosis from stage 3 to stage 4.