The Morning After

On the Feb. 17 finale of Joe Millionaire, some 36 million viewers witnessed Evan Marriott, a handsome lug of a construction worker who'd posed as a $50 million playboy and toyed with the emotions of 20 single ladies, give his heart to Zora Andrich, a prettily demure substitute teacher from small-town New Jersey. But speaking one day later, he sounds as if he wished he had wound up with her rival, Sarah Kozer, a sharp, sophisticated L.A. blonde who devoured the luxuries of Evan's decoy French château with eager eyes. "Sarah and I got along like gangbusters -- got along better than a lot of ex-girlfriends I've had," says Marriott. "But the premise of the show was to find a girl that I thought was into me for me. Sarah and I were more intimate, but that didn't mean that Sarah wasn't a gold digger." And Zora? "I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that Zora wasn't into my money. Zora was an innocent girl who was sweet and nice, and she was kind." Yes, and . . . ? "She was pretty. She was just the perfect girl for the show."

But what about you, Evan?

Although he kissed her in the finale and asked her to continue with him on what he called "this journey," Evan, 28, today seems less taken with having someone as guileless as Zora for a sidekick. When butler Paul Hogan presented the couple with a $1 million check to be split between them in the show's surprise ending, "she didn't believe it," says Marriott. "She didn't believe it the day after. I almost got mad and just said, 'Look, you've just been offered a half million dollars. Why don't you snap out of it and realize what's going on?' "

Of course, these hints of disillusionment may just be another trick played on our reality-addled minds by cynical FOX programmers, who will reunite the couple Feb. 24 for the first time since taping ended in late November. But even Andrich, 29, sounds underwhelmed, like a Cinderella who finally made it to the ball and called for her carriage well before midnight. "Is it possible to find true love in just a month with someone?" she asks. "I am a true believer in possibility. I never rule out anything. But honestly, I think it would be highly unlikely. The chances of it are pretty slim." Since her possible love match with Evan became a matter of heated national debate with the show's debut on Jan. 6, "I have friends who think he's perfect for me and that we make a beautiful couple," she says -- then deflates the sentiment: "Others say they would never in a million years have set me up with Evan."

For now, living apart, they seem to be sticking to the roles they assumed on the series: the Playboy and the Good Girl Next Door. Evan seems to enjoy having a chunk of change above and beyond his $19,000-a-year construction gig, tooling around L.A. in his new Mercedes and sampling celebrity life at events like the fashion shows last week in New York City. "I don't have to get up in the morning and wonder where my next meal's coming from," says Evan, a Virginia Beach, Va., native who has asked his father, bank vice president Hank Marriott, for tips on managing the money.