Kat From ‘Below Deck’ Left the Yachting World and Changed Careers

With Below Deck embarking on its eighth season, it’s high time to check in with one of the original stars. Kat Held made a big impression on the Bravo reality show, so much so that she was one of the few cast members who returned for the second season. But what happened to Kat from Below Deck after her 15 minutes of reality fame?

Fans got a glimpse of Kat on Below Deck’s 100th episode celebration on the Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen in January 2020, but here’s what else we know about the former reality star.

After working as Second Stewardess on the Honor and the Ohana, Kat left Below Deck after its second season, which aired in 2014.

“After filming Season 2, I reached my six-year mark working in the yachting industry and also had my 30th birthday,” she told Bravo’s The Daily Dish the following year. “I realized it was time to go down a different path and try something new.”

She also revealed a career change. “I decided to quit the yachting industry and move home to Rhode Island,” she told the site. “I got a job right away working as a waitress in a very busy restaurant in Newport, and I also bartended at a yacht club. Although I kept busy, becoming land-based was a difficult adjustment. Being away from the civilian life for so long can change the way you view the world. It can be hard to explain to others where I’ve been and what it’s like to live and work at sea.”

She said at the time that she was studying to become a personal trainer and that she hoped to work in the health field one day. And in 2017, she told Instagram followers she was making steps toward that dream. 

“Going to nursing school in January!” she wrote, captioning a selfie. “My smile is literally priceless. Hard work pays off!”

Kat is from Rhode Island and started her career soon after going to college in-state, according to her Bravo bio.

“Shortly after graduating from the University of Rhode Island, she gained an interest in discovering more of what the outside world has to offer,” the bio says. 

“Tired of watching mega yachts sail in and out of Newport Harbor without her, she purchased a book on how to become a yacht stewardess.”

That book got Kat her first job as a yacht stewardess in Miami, Fla., and the rest is history!

Kat does have an Instagram account — posting under the handle @katostate — but she doesn’t seem to use Insta very frequently. She posted for the first time in over a year in January 2020, for example, as she reunited with the Below Deck cast on Watch What Happens Live.

The ex-stewardess did, however, post an update in October 2020, revealing that she was still working as a bartender as she shared a photo of her dirty Converse shoes. 

“I wore these Converse bar tending at an outdoor biker bar this summer,” she wrote. “They [are] dirty, filthy, and yet I made a small killing wearing them. They carried me far. Dirty does not necessarily mean less than anyone — in any way. Sometimes it means way more.”