Rylee Arnold is sharing the serendipitous way she met her boyfriend, Walker Lyons.
On the Christmas episode of The Squeeze podcast, the Dancing with the Stars pro, 19, opened up about how her relationship with the USC football player began after she decided to take an Uber after feeling frustrated with Los Angeles traffic.
As she prepared for her second season of the dance competition show, Arnold confessed she felt "sad and lonely" and "didn't really have anybody" as her family lived in another state and her friend and fellow pro Ezra Soza were away in New York.
"I remember I had to go get an outfit for, I think it was for Good Morning America," she recalled. "And I was just like, I don't want a freaking drive right now and try to find parking at a random Mall. And it's Saturday. Like, I'm just not going to do that."
When she called her mom on the phone, she suggested Arnold take an Uber ride, find an outfit and go right home for some "self-care."
"I get in this Uber. It's this really nice lady," she said of her driver. "And we're just like, talking about dance, and she's talking about what she does. And also she was like, 'Okay, this might sound really weird. Don't take this the wrong way.'"
Her driver revealed that she had a "nephew playing USC football" and she had an instant impression that the two would "really get along." She encouraged the dancer to look Lyons up on Instagram and to connect with him if she was interested.
"I was like, okay, trusted this girl," Arnold continued. "I looked him up, and I was like, 'Okay, he's cute.' So at that point, I was like too scared to really do anything about it, and so I was just kind of like put it on my back pocket."
When she came back home, she forgot about the exchange and went back into "Dancing with the Stars mode." At the time, she "didn't really have a desire to get into a relationship" and balancing love with her hectic schedule seemed "so crazy to me" as she was unsure about her emotional availability.
One day, one of her sisters sent a TikTok video to their family group chat and suggested she reach out to him for a potential date.
"I was like, 'You guys are gonna die right now. Like, I literally was in his aunt's Uber a week ago,' and they're like, 'Riley, like, follow him. Now, follow him now,'" she laughed. "And then come to know that my brother-in-law is actually friends with his best friend's dad, and so there's a connection there."
Turns out, Lyons knew a lot of her friends in Utah as many his hometown friends also went to school in the same area she grew up.
"We have a crazy amount of mutuals so the fact we hadn't met before is kind of crazy, but I think we met at the most perfect time in both of our lives," she added.
"But anyways, I followed him first on Instagram, so then he followed me back, and he messaged me, and then got my number, and we text for a while, and then he was like, 'Can I take you on a date?' And I was like, 'Of course you can,'" she said. "That's where it all started."
In October, Arnold debuted her relationship with Lyons in an Instagram post that featured a carousel of photos from one of his football games.
"Is this a hard launch?? 🤭❤️🔥," she captioned the post.