Bestie bonding! Amid Danielle Ruhl and Iyanna McNeely’s respective breakups, they hit the town with their fellow Love Is Blind alums.
“When you try to take a cute video of your friends walking downtown but everyone is four drinks in,” Natalie Lee, who got engaged to Shayne Jansen on season 2 of the Netflix hit, captioned a Friday, August 19, Instagram Story photo. McNeely, 28, walked alongside Ruhl, 29, and Deepti Vempati. (Vempati, 31, broke off her engagement to Abhishek “Shake” Chatterjee at the altar.)
The Kennesaw State grad reshared the group pic onto her Story, jokingly adding: “I look like a kid with my work bag [on].”
The four Chicago residents, who are all currently single following their reality TV experience, have often hung out without the reality TV cameras. “Girlfriend appreciation post,” Ruhl captioned an August 12 Instagram carousel with McNeely, Lee and Vempati.
Ruhl’s Friday night out with the girls comes hours before Us Weekly confirmed she had filed for divorce from Nick Thompson. According to court docs viewed by Us, the associate marketing director petitioned the court to dissolve her marriage in Illinois’ Cook County Circuit Court. While neither Ruhl nor her 35-year-old estranged spouse have yet to publicly comment on the split, they’ve been notably absent on one another’s social media feeds.
Ruhl and Thompson found an instantaneous connection in the Love Is Blind season 2 pods, which aired on the streaming platform earlier this year. After dealing with their fair share of ups and downs, they eventually tied the knot by the finale.
“We flip-flopped a lot. Like, we flip-flopped a lot before everything had happened and it was, like, five seconds before we walked down the aisle that we decided we were gonna say yes,” Ruhl exclusively told Us last month, shortly after she and Thompson celebrated their first wedding anniversary. “So the day was stressful in and of itself, but it’s like the second — we both said — ‘This is it.’ Like the second, we said ‘Yes,’ it felt like this entire cloud was taken away from us because of, like, all of the pressure that we put on ourselves to figure out whether we wanted to say I do or I don’t. And then it just like, I don’t know. It was, like, a magical feeling.”
She added at the time: “I can’t wait to have kids to embarrass the heck out of both Nick and them. Like, I can’t wait. However, we got married really quickly and so it’s not anywhere in the [cards for] next two years. Maybe after that, but we really just wanna take the time to focus on one another.”
McNeely, for her part, announced earlier this week that she and Jarrette Jones had called it quits on their marriage after one year.
“After much thought, we’re saddened to share that we have separated and will begin the process of divorcing,” they captioned a joint Instagram statement. “While we have love for each other, our lives are going in different directions and that’s OK. Coming to this decision was far from easy and we will always wish each other the absolute best.”
The season 2 cast are expected to return on Love Is Blind: After the Altar later this year.
