Denton County Living Well Magazine September/October 2019 | Page 27

T
ravis Stork, MD, ER physician, and the host of the award winning
syndicated television program The Doctors, is having a moment.
Fresh off wrapping up the 11th season of his Emmy-nominated
medical talk show, in August Dr. Stork tied the knot with his
girlfriend of three years, lawyer Parris Bell. He’s been basking in
the resulting endorphins since.
Of course, the self-described adrenaline junkie’s
marriage to Bell left scores of women across the
country distraught. Stork, 47, the former star of
ABC’s long-running prime-time dating juggernaut,
The Bachelor, is officially off the market.
That doesn’t mean you don’t have the chance to be under
his ministration. If you happen to end up in a Nashville-
area emergency room, you may find yourself under
the handsome doctor’s care. When not in Hollywood
tapping The Doctors, Stork practices emergency room
medicine and lives in Nashville. Where, according to
reports, his colleagues call him ‘Doc Hollywood.’
Surprisingly, Stork never intended to be a doctor or
a television star. First, he was an actuarial scientist
working in Washington D.C. After graduating from Duke
University magna cum laude as a member of Phi Beta
Kappa Society, he found himself pouring over numbers
and research but longing for more human interaction.
“I just was never meant to be someone who was
sitting all day in front of a computer,” he told Chris
Parton with Nashville Lifestyles Magazine. To feel
more in tune with the community, on his off time,
he volunteered at a Washington free clinic, which
inspired Stork to earn a medical degree with
honors from the University of Washington, where
he was a member of Alpha Omega Alpha.
“Even though I was good at math, I feel like that
(volunteer clinic) experience showed me that you can
use science and also have the personal element.”
During his emergency medicine residency at Vanderbilt
University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee,
Stork appeared on Season 8 of The Bachelor. Stork
later revealed how he landed as the star of the popular
ABC show in a 2016 episode of The Doctors.
“I went to dinner with my ER colleagues and a
person came up to me from The Bachelor and hung
out with our group of ER friends and was buying
beverages,” Stork recollects. “The next thing you
know, I’m literally in Paris as The Bachelor.”
During the season finale of the dating show, Stork
handed schoolteacher Sarah Stone the final rose.
Seven days after the program’s pre-taped finale aired,
the couple called it quits. Stork went on to complete
his residency before working in the emergency
departments at Vanderbilt and then a hospital in
Colorado, although he grappled with the tremendous
recognition his stint as the bachelor generated.
“What I didn’t expect was coming back and then feeling
like I had to justify all the hard work I had put in,” he told
Meredith B. Kile for ET Online. “I worked really hard in
med school and residency. My record speaks for itself.”
Although he didn’t find his soul mate on The Bachelor,
the heartthrob doctor’s time spent “interviewing”
potential mates was not for naught. By the time he
landed a spot on The Doctors, Stork was not only a
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