Ariana Madix hinted that she wants to move in with boyfriend Daniel Wai, addressed what fans don’t know about him, and cleared up rumors surrounding the start of their relationship. The Vanderpump Rules alum also revealed that she dated comedian Daniel Tosh.
Shortly before Ariana began dating Wai, she broke up with her then-boyfriend Tom Sandoval, who cheated on her with Rachel Leviss. Wai, who lives in New York, is a fitness trainer and bartender.
On the Disrespectfully podcast, Ariana addressed being long-distance with Daniel. “I don’t love it,” said the star. “The idea of it, I don’t love long-term.”
She hinted that it may be time to move in together.
“I feel like two years is, it’s getting to a point where it’s like, ‘OK, now we’re really going to [move in together],’” she said. “Then I’m in Fiji for two months, or I’m in New York for four or five months. It’s like, well… we might as well wait to talk about that.”
“What’s good about long distance is that it really forces you to talk to each other because you can’t just hang out and watch a movie or go to a bar and make out. You have to have conversations,” she went on. “I think that’s really helped us build our communication from the beginning. What he’s really good about is making sure that there’s always a date.”
“We have phone dates and stuff where we’ll pick a recipe and we both order the (ingredients) and we make it together and then sit and eat together and watch shows… He makes sure we have dates while we’re apart, as well.”
Ariana then hinted at what people don’t know about him.
“I feel like when I try to think of what people don’t know [about Daniel], I think people maybe don’t know just how many things he does work-wise,” she explained. “He’s really smart.”
The star said he has earned a computer science degree from Virginia Tech.
“He was in software engineering, and he would consult for all these different things. And then he just didn’t feel fulfilled. He was getting into fitness on his own, and then he was like, ‘I really want to do this with my life.’ And he started doing that. And now he, obviously, has this really successful training business,” she continued. “It’s incredible because when we first started dating… I mean, he’s still super successful, but I was not.”
“And so now I feel we’ve evened out, and it’s nice because he’s super supportive of my endeavors. And I’m very supportive [of his]. Guys, go to Little More, [the bar where he works] in Tribeca. It’s great,” she said. “He’s just really hardworking and super dedicated to whatever it is that he does: our relationship, his job, all the stuff. And when he comes in town, he fixes things in my house.”
Later in the podcast, Ariana discussed the start of their relationship amid claims that she started dating him 10 days after they met.
“We met at my very long-time friend [Lauren]’s wedding, which happened to be one of his very long-term friends as well,” she said. “So when her and Michael were finally getting married, because they’d been together for a very long time, it was like super exciting. And it was in Oaxaca, and I was so excited to go to Oaxaca.”
But Ariana thought she was going to have a “panic attack” when she was “alone” at the airport, as she had previously thought she would attend the wedding with her ex, Tom.
“I was in the airport, and they’re, like, calling out my ex’s name on the intercom. And I had to go to the counter and be like, yeah, he’s not coming,” she said. “[Daniel and I] met actually the night before the wedding. The night before, they had like a welcome party, and a bunch of us went out for drinks afterwards … We sat sort of catty-cornered from each other, but we were all in this big, long table chatting … [Later on] I was like, oh, he is hot.”
“And then the next night at the wedding, I drink a lot of Mezcal, my favorite, and made out with somebody. I was like, I remember talking to Alex Guarnaschelli, my old boss, an incredibly talented, wonderful chef. And she was like, you should make out with that guy. I was like, I think I’m going to,” Ariana added. “And then we just, we stayed up all night talking. And then we just kept texting and flirting.”
She later asked him to go to Coachella with her, and she often went to New York for work. However, Ariana suggested that it didn’t get serious until after their Coachella trip.
Ariana also revealed that she dated comedian Daniel Tosh, the host of Tosh.0.
“He’s fine,” she said, via @vanderpodrecaps on Instagram. “I dated him. No one knows that, but yeah, I did … It was like six months or so. He used to watch Charlotte sometimes. He was very nice. I have nothing bad to say about him.”
