Continued from page 1

The Morning After

Thursday February 20, 2003 10:57 AM EST

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If anything, many of his meals these days are catered celebrity events, including the Hollywood premiere of the film Daredevil, where fans scream out his name. "I'm having a blast," he says. Still, he admits there's a downside to his newfound celebrity. "I've had people just come over and slide into the booth when I'm in the middle of a bite at a restaurant," says Evan. And he's annoyed that the demands of fame have kept him from hitting the gym for nearly seven months. (His wide-shouldered 6'5" frame is down to 208 lbs. from 225.) He's still ticked that Joe Millionaire's producers never outfitted his rented château with some fitness equipment. "I told them before I went over that I'm a pretty easy guy to please," he says. "I told them that as long as I get enough sleep and have a place to work out, I'm happy as a clam." But everything's dandy when he tools around in that new Mercedes. "It's like a rolling therapist," he says. "I feel good in it. They should make them affordable for everyone."

Zora would probably just give them away. "I recall once there was a time we were on a date in Paris and I was asking Evan, 'Do you feel it's important to contribute to society?' He basically said no, it wasn't a priority," says Zora, who until recently lived in a cramped, unheated apartment above Bell's Tavern in Lambertville, N.J. (where one beer-hoisting neighbor declared her win "the most exciting thing to happen here besides the shad festival"). She made ends meet as a substitute teacher and visiting aide to senior citizens, along with the odd modeling job (including a heavy-machinery calendar). Last summer she made a few extra bucks handing out tiny promotional bottles of gin at a local bar, Havana, on weekends. Her annual income, says Zora, was even lower than Evan's $19,000. "I whited it out on questionnaires for the show, it was such a pathetic little figure."

She plans to share her windfall with her family, starting with her mother, Vujka Andrich, an astrologer who raised Zora in near poverty in Boulder, Colo. "She needs $15,000 in dental work, and she doesn't have a car that's running," says Zora. "And my aunt has bone cancer and lives in a little village outside Belgrade. She had part of her jaw removed and needs another operation to finish the reconstruction, and she can't afford it."

That's the Zora everyone recalls back in Lambertville. "You know how sometimes you can't wait until someone leaves? Not her." says Joanne O'Shea, a Bell's waitress. "It's just the opposite." Zora looked after O'Shea's grandmother in her later years. "Zora would comfort her," says O'Shea. "She would sit with her for hours, hold her hand, rub her face and her head. A lot of people don't have the patience."