Strangers come up to me in bars and tell me about their sex lives. I'm thinking, 'You think I can make it better somehow?'

I was going to move back to Dallas, and my goal was to work at Channel 8 and be a sportscaster and cover my Cowboys and live happily ever after.

I always liken it to being a referee - if you notice the referee, that's not a good thing.

I had an opportunity to move to L.A. back in 1999 and start up a horse racing network of all things. At the time, I was younger and married but didn't have kids; so we thought, Let's just go to L.A. for a while and have fun, and we can always come home. One thing led to another; and once I was out there, I had my eyes opened to this other world and quickly got a home and gardens show and did a game show and then The Bachelor ended up falling into my lap in 2001. And 'the rest is history' as they say.

The show is escapism. If you look back to when I was in college, all the girls in the sorority houses were gathered around watching soap operas. That was the escapism, the show that was giving you something you couldn't have. Now, you go into any sorority house, there are 50 to 100 girls piled in watching The Bachelor. We are the modern-day soap opera.

My kids have never known me not working on The Bachelor. But they've lived in Paris and Italy and been to Hawaii and Bora-Bora with me, and it's incredible to me that they've had these experiences.

My wildest tipping point moment came when I was introduced to Clint Eastwood. He was sitting there, typical Clint Eastwood, wearing a white T-shirt and jeans, holding a Budweiser. He looks at me and says, "I watch your show from time to time." I just stopped. I was like, "I can't even think about that. I'm not even sure if I'm happy about that."