West High School graduate and former Seattle Seahawks defensive back Mike O’Brien wanted his daughter, Chantal O’Brien, to get back into the dating world after her recent divorce.

So he persuaded her to audition for a reality show.

Now, 28-year-old Chantal O’Brien, a contestant on ABC’s “The Bachelor,” premiering Jan. 3, is sweeping the Hollywood blogosphere with a video of her slapping “Bachelor” Brad Womack and is rumored in gossip websites to be the winner — the future Mrs. Womack — of the show.

“The Bachelor” pits 30 women against each other for the affection of one man. The women are gradually eliminated from the show, which typically ends in a marriage proposal to the winning bachelorette.

Mike O’Brien, who now lives on Mercer Island and owns the O’Brien Auto Group with car dealerships in the Seattle area, told his daughter to audition for the show about six months ago. She competed against 200 or 300 aspiring “bachelorettes” in Seattle, he said.

Mike O’Brien said he didn’t expect Chantal O’Brien to find her future husband on the show, but he and his wife wanted her to try something new.

“She was just doing it more for laughs and having a good time,” said O’Brien, who graduated from West High in 1974. “I don’t know that she had any expectations. She needed to move on, so it was a good time for her to try for something else.”

Despite the casual attitude toward the show, rumors indicate Chantal O’Brien, who works as a personal assistant to her father, got not just a few laughs out of the show, but also an engagement ring. Websites such as Reality Steve, The Hollywood Gossip and TVFanSpace.com report she beat out 29 other women on the show for 38-year-old Womack’s proposal. The sites said the couple is still together and spent Thanksgiving with the O’Brien family in Palm Desert, Calif.

The two got off to a rocky start, however. Chantal O’Brien, the first to emerge from the limousine when the contestants introduce themselves to Womack, told Womack she wanted to give him something “from every woman in America” — and slapped him in the face.

Womack created reality show controversy during his previous stint on the show as the “bachelor” in 2007 and rejected both finalists, coming away empty-handed.

The slap initially surprised her parents, but her father said it’s just like her to create a stir on the show.

“We were shocked by that, but that’s Chantal,” he said.

Chantal O’Brien is contractually prohibited from speaking about her stint on the show, she said, and her father did not say how far along she made it, but did say she had the time of her life.

“I think she had a blast,” Mike O’Brien said. “I think she had a great time.”

This story has been changed.