Yahoo Lifestyle ‘Dancing With the Stars’ Pro Rylee Arnold Just Hard-Launched Her New Boyfriend!
Real Dancing With the Stars fans know that our excitement goes well beyond pristine performances and *chef’s kiss* episode themes. It also includes knowing absolutely every single thing there is to know about everyone’s personal lives (our obsession with Joey Graziadei and Kelsey Anderson’s romance and the Brooks Nader and Gleb Savchenko drama of it all knows no bounds).
Enter: our!!!! reaction when pro Rylee Arnold legit hard-launched her relationship with USC football player Walker Lyon on October 27.
To quote Rylee’s season 33 partner, Olympian Stephen Nedoroscik, “OHHHH SHOOT SHE DID IT GO RYLEE.” Now that you’ve recovered from the sweet news, let’s get into all the deets surrounding the Folsom, California native, shall we?
Walker plays football
...and he’s really good at it lol. The athlete played the sport at Folsom High School, but sadly, a broken leg cut his senior season short. How-ev-er (!!!) he was so successful while he *did* play that he was named All-American Bowl’s Man of the Year in January 2023 and recognized for epitomizing a “high standard of excellence in community service and athletic distinction,” per NBC Sports.
Ultimately, Walker committed to USC to continue playing as a tight end (brb, screaming because our Travis Kelce obsession led to us actually recognizing this position). According to the university’s website, Rylee’s boyfriend is third on the team’s tight end depth chart *pretends to know what this means, but assuming it’s good*.
During a press conference this past September (aka his freshman year), he gushed that USC was “always one of [his] favorite schools.”
“I’m a West Coast kid from California, and obviously, it’s a really good academic school, and it’s a really good football school, so it kind of checked a lot of my boxes,” Walker then explained before adding, “I love the offense that Coach [lincoln] Riley brought here so it took me a while to commit fully but I felt super good about it and I still feel super good about it.”
They kinda-sorta knew each other through mutual friends
Thankfully, Rylee continuously keeps things real with all of her fans on social media and updated us on her first date—a “sweet treat” and a drive around Santa Monica!—with Walker via an October 3 TikTok in October 2024.
“I'm actually really excited to go on this date. I have never met him before, but we have a lot of mutuals, which is interesting coincidences, and then we’ve just been texting a lot lately, and so I actually get to meet him tonight,” she gushed just before stepping out with her now-boyfriend. “I’m feeling nervous but I’m also really excited because we’ve been having a good time because we’ve been having a good time talking and texting,” the celeb added.
“I feel like our personalities match really well already, so I’m interested to see how this will go, but we will see,” Rylie noted before finishing touching up her makeup and showing off her outfit.
They’re both members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
Yep, it turns out these two have more in common than just being insanely gifted at sports. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Case in point? Walker actually graduated early from high school so he could serve a Mormon mission in Norway prior to beginning his freshman year at USC, per his bio on the university’s website. His time in the country clearly resonated with him, since the athlete chose to feature the American and Norwegian flags in his Instagram bio, alongside a link to the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints.
During a February 2023 convo with Church News, Walker opened up about who inspired him to pursue the mission: “It came down to a decision I made when I was a kid, and I wanted to stick with that. My dad has talked about his mission as one of the most important, if not the most important, catalyst in his life. That’s ultimately why I decided to serve.”
After learning he was bound for Norway, “It was one of the coolest moments of my life. As soon as I [found out], I knew it was the right decision, like that’s what I was supposed to be doing right now.”
Rylee, for her part, has also discussed her faith a bunch—including during a December 2023 appearance on The Weekly Trash.
“Throughout the whole entire season, it was like, ‘Rylee, you’re so happy and you’re so fun [...] What is this light that I just see?’” she rhetorically said before noting, “It’s Christ. That’s just genuinely what it is and that’s something that is so important to me and something I just always want to portray.”
Oh, and FYI: Yes, Rylee *is* familiar with The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Like, so much so that she’s even revealed her go-to Swig order: “It’s a 32 oz. Big Al. That’s it. Extra ice!” Apparently, the soda concoction features “diet coke, sugar-free coconut, and lime.” Brb, recreating this immediately!
Rylee has previously spoken about how tough dating is
While recalling the dating scene after her first year on Dancing With the Stars during a September 2024 episode of Lightweights Podcast, the celeb confessed,“I had a hard time being on dates with people the same age as me because I do feel like I have matured a lot, and I do feel like I have experienced a lot of life, so we are just in a completely different ballpark.”
Later on during the convo, the dancer reflected on the dating scene in Utah, where the outings are “all kind of the same.” “For my Utah girlies listening in or any Utahns, please let me know if you have gone on a date where you went up the canyon, you went on a picnic, you maybe painted, you maybe ate, and then you went back home,” Rylee said. “That’s the standard! They go up the canyon, we have a picnic, we either go get food for the picnic or we just have a picnic, I don’t even know. And then you talk, which is fun. It’s a really fun date, but I probably went on those dates a lot with those people.”
Welp! We have a sneaky feeling Walker and Rylee’s time together will be anything but boring, especially considering...
Rylee and Steven Nedoroscik are planning on going on a double date!
You read that right! The celeb and her Dancing With the Stars partner Stephen recently revealed to People that a double date is in their future. “We have not had a double date yet, but that has to happen,” the 19-year-old admitted. “It’s going to happen. It’s got to happen,” the Olympian (who has yet to meet Walker IRL) responded, which prompted Rylee to excitedly say, “That would be a party.”
Literally couldn’t be more obsessed with this duo if we tried!
Anyway! That’s pretty much all we know about Rylee and Walker’s romance, but fear not! We’ll be updating this with new developments ASAP.
You Might Also Like
