Michael Allio and Danielle Maltby have officially called it quits.
“I guess I’ll just come out with it. We’re not together anymore,” Allio said on Jason Tartick’s “Trading Secrets” podcast on Monday, September 18. “It’s not what we planned. We both threw a lot into this relationship and it’s really awful when it doesn’t work out.”
Allio hinted that the twosome weren’t compatible.
“You mourn the loss not of just that person and that friend in your life, but also the future that you had envisioned. And it’s to no fault of hers,” he said. “She poured everything into this. … We’re still, you know, working through some things and trying to stay close. But yeah, [the] last couple months have been really tough.”
Allio concluded that “starting over again” is “always frightening,” adding: “I know that time will heal because I’ve felt that before, but it doesn’t make it any less difficult.”
In August, Allio revealed that he and Maltby were keeping things “private” amid speculation that they had split.
“I’ll say this. Being in a public relationship, it isn’t fun,” he said during an interview on the “She’s All Bach” podcast. “Danielle and I, like, both agree that the only people that should be in our relationship are us two. So we think the healthiest way to have a relationship is to keep it private.”
Allio added that he and Maltby “both love each other, like, very much.”
He continued: “I think when you start having a relationship and bringing people into it, people have opinions, you know, and it’s just not the right way to run a relationship, so that’s just something we’ve decided.”
Allio and Maltby met on season 8 of Bachelor in Paradise, which filmed in summer 2022. With encouragement from bartender Wells Adams, Maltby asked Allio to accompany her on a one-on-one date.
“They cut it, but I told @MichaelAllio I had someone for him and then walked up the steps of paradise, welcomed @daniellemmaltby and told her to go find Michael,” Adams tweeted in October 2022.
The pair quickly connected as they had both previously lost their partners. Allio’s late wife, Laura, died in 2019 from cancer while Maltby’s fiancé, Nick, died in 2011 following a drug overdose. During the season finale, they agreed that they wanted to pursue their relationship outside of the show and at the BiP reunion in November 2022, Allio told Maltby that he loved her.
“Meeting Danielle changed my life and everything we’ve been doing since then has been getting better and better,” Allio said at the time. “I’ve only said I love you to one person in my life, but I love you.”
Maltby also revealed during the special that she was moving to Akron, Ohio, where Allio lives with his son, James, whom he shared with his late wife Laura. “She’s remarkable with him and that’s no surprise at all,” Allio explained.
That same month, Allio got emotional as he gushed about his son and Maltby.
“I love being a dad. It’s fantastic,” he told Us Weekly at the time. “And for Danielle and I … it took a long time for us to actually drop our guard while we were on the show, and I think that was evident when people watched it. … We’re tiptoeing, we’re on our own timeline. The show can have whatever timeline they want, but there’s too much at stake for us. There’s just too much in our lives. So for Danielle and I, it’s been awesome seeing both of us kind of shut our guard and be more comfortable with each other. She’s hilarious. She’s so much fun. She’s got this creative, fun energy that’s intoxicating and so it’s just getting closer in that nature.”
