This year’s first Marriage At First Sight (MAFS) commitment ceremony took a surprising turn, as fan favourite Luke Fourniotis elected to “stay” in his marriage with Mel Akbay.
Fans are divided over why Luke would decide to stay in the relationship, given we’ve Mel seemingly stonewall Luke after he was late for their wedding, chewed gum at the altar, and failed to have blond hair. While some sources say that Mel simply got a “bad edit“, there was overwhelming support from fans for Luke to be rematched or given a season of Farmer Wants A Wife.
So why exactly did Luke write “stay” on his card? One popular opinion is that he had no choice. “Producers told him to. Simple,” declared one Reddit fan. “100% had to write it to appease production”, added another.
Weighing in on rumoured bonuses, another Redditor wrote: “I’m pretty sure I recall hearing about producers giving contestants pay rises to stay at commitment ceremonies when they didn’t originally want to, but I could be wrong.”
Others say that Luke is staying to punish Mel for how she treated him, with a couple of comments from Facebook fans reading, “He chose to stay so Karma can finish the experiment” and “I was thinking the same thing, he wrote stay because he knew she wanted to leave.” A few fans, of course, reckon that he stayed to amass more time on national TV and more clout.
Luke weighs in on why he chose to stay with Mel Akbay
In a recent interview with 101.9 The Fox Melbourne, Luke set the record straight on why he wrote “stay” at his first commitment ceremony.
“I didn’t want to leave the experiment without seeing the experts first. This was the first commitment ceremony. so I felt that was important, to see their perspective and see if they could call out what I was seeing,” he explained. “The other thing is I’d become some a shell of a human, and I just hated that about myself. I just really didn’t want to leave the experiment on that note. Feeling so down, miserable, and horrible.”
Luke denied that he was forced by Channel Nine to hang around, stating that it was his decision to stay on the show. So there you have it folks, straight from the horse’s mouth.
Time will tell Luke’s decision to stay was a good one. To be fair, it looks like they had a pretty good game of mini golf.
Married at First Sight (MAFS) 2026 airs Sunday – Monday on Channel 9 and 9Now.
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