The Boiteau brothers – Claude and Jacques – are used to gracing the Beacon’s photo pages dressed as fried chicken, Rainier beer bottles and brides on skis. The brothers are regulars at the Whitefish Mountain Resort’s annual Pond Skim event, and their costumes never fail to impress.
Now, the Boiteaus are letting their personalities shine in another publication, but this time they’re hoping to win America’s hearts as Cosmopolitan’s most eligible bachelors in the country.
Claude, 31, and Jacques, 27, are already considered the cream of the crop in Montana, featured in this month’s magazine as Montana’s most eligible bachelors. But they want the ultimate prize, Jacques said, and not just for bragging rights: if they win the overall competition, they get $10,000, which the brothers have already decided they would use to buy a drift boat.
“I think we have a pretty good shot of winning actually, which is kind of funny,” Jacques said in an interview with the Beacon.
In order to win, the brothers needed to receive the most votes online, beating out the other bachelors listed in the magazine.
The competition is a little outside of the norm for the brothers, Jacques said. They didn’t even sign themselves up for it; a friend’s wife received an email from Cosmo about seeking eligible men from Montana to represent the Big Sky state. She signed them up, Jacques said.
It wasn’t until a rafting trip with their friend that they were even aware of the situation. Their friend suddenly told them he needed a picture of both brothers, shirtless and clean-shaven, Jacques said. It was an odd request, he added, laughing, but once their friend explained, they went along with it.
As a petroleum engineer for Chevron, Jacques works rotational shifts for the company, and is out of cell phone range for days or weeks at a time. One day, after getting off a helicopter after a shift, he had a message from a person at the magazine inviting the brothers to a photo shoot in California.
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Wearing a wedding dress and carrying a bouquet of flowers, Jacques Boiteau takes his first run at pond skimming at Whitefish Mountain Resort in 2011. Lido Vizzutti | Flathead Beacon |
The interview and photo shoot went really well, Jacques said, although the brothers didn’t exactly fit the mold of the typical Cosmopolitan bachelor. The other contestants were models, or trying to be models, or trying to get on a reality TV show, he said. Most of them had agents and public relations firms they consulted before and during the shoot.
“We’re definitely (not) their typical guys,” Jacques said.
Their profiles contain their personal information, as well as some other racy tidbits that the magazine is known for. That aspect of it has been a bit jarring, Jacques said, especially when his mom or grandma wants to get online to check it out.
Cosmo also set up an email account for each bachelor to receive messages from adoring fans; Jacques said he has mostly heard from friends razzing him about it, and from a couple of ex-girlfriends. He also has an admirer in the Department of Corrections, he said with a laugh.
While the brothers are taking a whatever-happens approach to the whole thing, Jacques said the prize money would be a serious boost. So what is it that these Montana bachelors have over the other contestants?
“We’re down-to-earth and have personalities,” Jacques said.