Johnny McIntyre and Amy Cortés, who got married on season 6 of the Netflix series, tell PEOPLE about becoming each other’s “rock” in the last year, how they plan to celebrate the milestone and what’s next for them
Love Is Blind’s Johnny McIntyre and Amy Cortés are celebrating their love!
The couple, who met and tied the knot on season 6 of the Netflix series, marked their one-year wedding anniversary on Friday, May 10.
“I feel like it has not been a year,” Johnny, 28, tells PEOPLE of the milestone. “I feel like it’s been a month and a half. Time has been absolutely flying and it’s insane to think that’s already been a year. I don’t know, it just feels really good.”
“We’ve been enjoying our first year so much, traveling, seeing family,” Amy, 28, adds. “We’re enjoying every second of it, and it went by so fast. At the same time I feel like we’ve been together for ages in a weird way, if that makes sense. But yeah, I’m in the same boat as Johnny, for sure.”
After getting married on the popular Netflix show last year, Johnny and Amy have been settling into their newlywed life in Charlotte, North Carolina. Their year has been filled with tons of family time and travels — and their anniversary plans will be no different.
“We’re going to Puerto Rico,” Amy shares. “I have a whole itinerary planned out for us. It’s going to be Johnny’s first time in PR and I’m super excited because this has been a long time coming. We were actually supposed to go in January, but that fell through. So what better way to do it than doing an anniversary trip?”
Amy says their trip to Puerto Rico will consist of “a little bit of everything,” including tourist activities and relaxation. “I want him to experience Puerto Rico to the fullest… I want him to see the rainforest and the nicest beaches, as well as the city life and the nightlife,” she shares.
After their six-day getaway, the couple will be flying to Pennsylvania for Johnny’s brother’s graduation. “We’re going to go see him and the rest of the fam up north, so that’ll be amazing too,” says Amy. “It’ll be back to back traveling, but it’ll be so fun and worth it.”
While they’re excited to celebrate the one-year milestone, Johnny and Amy can’t help but look back at how far they’ve come. In the last year, they say they’ve had to lean on each other and overcome obstacles — something Love Is Blind viewers didn’t get to see when season 6 filmed.
“I feel like the show just showed us at our absolute highs. Loving life, being really happy, really energetic,” Johnny explains. “But during the year, there’s definitely been highs and lows and outside stress has really been causing a lot of the lows for us. She’s just been a rock as far as making me feel secure in everything I’m doing right now.”
“She gives me the courage [where] if I do want to take a leap or try something else, pivot somewhere different, I can do so knowing that she 100 percent has my back,” he adds. “And that’s one of the biggest things I absolutely love about her.”
Amy shares a similar perspective, telling PEOPLE her husband was by her side as she dealt with several personal issues this year, including a months-long stress-induced inflammation of her chest that affected her sternum and ribs, and mental health struggles.
“He is such a rock to me in the sense that he is always happy to help. Something about Johnny is that if I ask him anything, he will always be like, ‘I’d be happy to.’ And he genuinely is happy to. And sometimes I feel like I’m overdoing it and annoying him. But he genuinely is just so happy to just be there,” she says, joking about Johnny’s “golden retriever vibes.”
“But obviously, life can hit and I faced a lot of health issues in the past year. He was just very much involved and on top of it, especially when it came to my health,” she continues. “There was a part where it was just too many things going on all at once and I felt like I was broken… We had just met on the show and we’re in our first year of marriage and I am already having problems with my health and I’m young. I felt like I was being a burden within the marriage, but he never made me feel any less. He was always supportive… And I feel like that’s something that not everyone has and I’m very, very blessed to have that.”
The couple also joke that Johnny has come a long way with his understanding of birth control. (The topic was one of controversy on season 6 when it was revealed that Amy was not on birth control and Johnny, never having dated anyone who wasn’t on a form of contraception, was fearful that it would result in an unplanned pregnancy, even with the use of condoms.)
“I am an expert about birth control now. You ask me a question, I’ll be like, ha, here’s an answer,” Johnny says. “I have learned a good bit about it over the past year and it definitely feels kind of weird thinking about the fact that before when meeting were engaged, I really didn’t know anything.”
Adds Amy: “I’ll say he is very much seasoned in that department now.”
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Looking ahead to their future, Johnny and Amy have more plans to travel and visit family, but also intend to find time for themselves.
“[We’ll] maybe have a little bit of leisure. Actually enjoy ourselves,” Johnny says. “I feel like we’ve been running around crazy just every single day. So having maybe some breaks and setting some boundaries with just commitment we’re making, that’s going to be a very big thing for the future.”
Amy says they also plan to continue their open communication and compromise that has made their marriage so successful.
“With us, we try to have consistent check-ins. In the pods we would always do temperature checks. That’s something that’s so important to us because it helps us gauge how can we can be more of a support to each other,” she shares. “Having those continuous conversations and just really being mindful of everything is key.”
