Galey Alix had never envisioned herself as an HGTV star from the start. With a thriving career in the finance industry, she had spent over a decade as an executive at Goldman Sachs. However, three years ago, she embarked on a new adventure when she decided to explore her passion for design and decoration. The catalyst for this change was the 10,000 sq. ft. Connecticut mansion she and her fiancé had planned to call home. Little did she know that this leap of faith would lead her to become the host of “Home in a Heartbeat” on HGTV.
“I was based in Florida but met him when I was in New York for a work event. And we fell madly in love, got engaged, and got our dream home in Connecticut, where he was from,”
Alix, 29, recalls to PEOPLE.
“The home wasn’t ready to move into just yet, so I said to him,
‘Hey, I’ll work on making this house perfect over the next year. I’ll manage the whole thing from Florida and commute up here every weekend to get it done. And then when it’s complete, I’ll resign from my job, move here and we can get married and start our life together.’ “
The deal seemed like a dream come true for Alix, unaware of the extraordinary path it would set her on.
Faced with the challenge of finding suitable contractors and designers, she made a bold decision to take matters into her own hands. Juggling her demanding full-time job, wedding preparations, and a staggering 52 round trip flights from Florida to Connecticut, Alix dedicated herself to self-education in construction and design. Throughout the course of a year, she delved into the intricacies of tiling, woodworking, lighting installation, and various other skills, steadily expanding her knowledge and expertise.
And wanting to impress her husband-to-be, she began filming her progress and posting it to Instagram.
“I just wanted him to be proud of the work I was doing,” she says.
“I thought, ‘This will be a cool way to show off the transformed spaces.’ “
Alix Reveals Eating Disorder and Mental Illness
But with so much pressure on her, Alix ended up getting “really, really sick.”
“I’ve long struggled with a very severe eating disorder, both anorexia and bulimia. And I also battle perfectionism, which is its own disease — kind of autonomous from the eating disorder, though I do think they often hold hands,” she says.
“So during this time, I was running myself ragged trying to get everything perfect, and it had a dangerous effect on my eating.”
Alix, like many with anorexia or bulimia, kept her struggles to herself. “Eating disorders, as I’ve learned, thrive in secrecy,”she says.
“Part of the disorder is that they convince you that everything’s okay and you’re just doing a little diet to just be better. It’s not something you need to tell anyone about, you tell yourself. It’s very shameful. And secrets make you sicker.”
Just before their wedding, and following her resignation from work and relocation to Connecticut, Alix found herself at a critical juncture. Overwhelmed by the mounting pressure, she reached a breaking point and decided to open up to her fiancé.
With honesty and vulnerability, she confided in him, sharing the challenges she was facing and acknowledging the need for professional support. Recognizing the importance of her mental well-being, she resolved to seek the guidance of a therapist and embark on a healing journey.
Her fiancé? He broke up with her.
“He told me he did not want to marry me anymore because I had been dishonest with him by hiding my struggle,” Alix remembers. “So that day, I moved back to Florida with my dogs, but without my fiancé, without my career, without my health, and without the home I had just worked so hard on. It was by far the lowest point of my life.”
Recognizing the importance of prioritizing her mental well-being, she took immediate action by removing Instagram from her phone. This meant leaving behind the substantial following of 800 people she had gathered over the course of a year.
With a determination to heal, she sought the assistance of a therapist and a nutritionist, acknowledging her need for support during this challenging time. “I felt a sense of hopelessness,” she admits, “and reaching out for help became crucial.”
Months later, as she gradually regained her strength and resilience, she mustered the courage to confront the aftermath of her breakup.
Curiosity led her to log back into the social media app, fully expecting an onslaught of inquiries from friends and family about her elusive wedding photos.
However, to her surprise, she discovered an astounding surge in her followers, with tens of thousands of new individuals eagerly reaching out to her. Their messages were filled with requests, imploring her to apply her design expertise to their homes.
“My videos went viral while I was away,” Alix explains, still in awe of the situation. “Before, I would be lucky if one of my videos had 100 views. Now, I’m talking, 30 million views! I was floored. And all of these people wanted to hire me for something that I didn’t even think was a skill I had.”
Rather than succumbing to self-pity, Alix chose a different path, one filled with determination and a resounding “yes” to new opportunities. Despite her return to Goldman Sachs and the sense of duty it entailed, she felt compelled to take action. Instead of embarking on lengthy construction projects for clients, she adopted a condensed approach. Weeks were dedicated to meticulous measurements, planning, and ordering necessary supplies. Then, Alix orchestrated a swift transformation by requesting homeowners to temporarily vacate their premises for a weekend, assembling a capable team to complete all the work within a remarkable 72-hour timeframe.
This dynamic approach bears a resemblance to the structure familiar to viewers of her HGTV show, “Home in a Heartbeat,” for which she also serves as an executive producer. This distinctive style sets the series apart within the network’s lineup, even if it occasionally proves exhausting for Alix herself.
“I don’t think we sleep at all those three days,” she laments. “It’s just non-stop.”
To make things easier, Alix doesn’t consult with clients on design.
“In three years of doing this, I’ve never once told them what colors I’m using, materials — heck, I don’t even tell them what rooms I’m doing,” she says.
“I want it all to come as a complete surprise. And I don’t want to put the homeowner through the pain of dragging them to stores, asking which 10 fabrics they like, which tile. It’s also why I don’t want them living in construction for four months with a bunch of random people walking in and out of their house. This is about making things as simple and painless as possible.”
Helping her is a group of friends, all of whom, like Alix, work day jobs.
“They’re a team of just incredible, kind, passionate people,”
she says. “I seriously couldn’t do it without them. And what’s ironic is that part of my devastation in losing my fiancé and the house in Connecticut was that I thought I was losing the family we were trying to build together. I thought, ‘I’m never going to have a family now. We’re not going to get married and have kids; this life is over for me.’ But what I didn’t realize is that by losing that potential family, I gained a whole new family in building this business.”
“There’s eight of us, including myself, and I’m not lying when I say I would risk my life for every single person on my team,” she says. “They’re everything to me. So I don’t feel that sense of loss anymore because of them.”
She’s also found love again in boyfriend Dale Moss of The Bachelorette fame.
“We’ve been together for a little over a year now,” she reflects. “Throughout my life, my father shared one invaluable piece of dating advice with me: ‘Pay attention to a person’s actions rather than their words. Anyone can speak empty words and manipulate your emotions, but their actions reveal their true character and feelings towards you.’
What astounds me about Dale is the remarkable harmony between his words and actions. When he says, ‘I love you,’ his every daily action reinforces that love and care for me.”
Looking back on it all, Alix says she’s “grateful” for her journey — even the rocky parts — and hopes that others can find strength in her story.
“I didn’t know the life I had waiting for me,” she says. “Sometimes you think it’s so dark, and you are just getting buried under the ground, but you might not realize that you’re actually a seed being planted. You have to be willing to let some light in and nourish yourself, but believe me, you can grow, get stronger and blossom.”
“Starting over saved me,” Alix adds. “And if there’s one thing I hope it’s that others hearing my story won’t compare themselves to me and feel less-then; I want them to compare themselves to somebody who has struggled, who has had a lot of internal battles, who has not won or succeeded in everything she went after, and who is doing the best with what they have. I want them to know, it’s possible for them too.”