Bachelor Nation’s Tanner Courtad is done dancing around those romance rumors with Dancing With the Stars cohost Julianne Hough.
“That was short-lived, but it was fun,” Tanner, 33, shared on the Tuesday, November 3, episode of iHeartRadio’s “Bachelor Happy Hour” podcast. “I was going to Dancing With the Stars to support Joey [Graziadei], and I was sitting in the front row, and Ezra [Sosa] came over to me, and he goes, ‘Hey, our host thinks you’re cute. Can I give you her number?’”
Spoiler alert: Tanner couldn’t turn down that request.
“I look back at Justin Glaze. I’m like, ‘Did you hear that? Is this a prank?’ I thought Justin was in on it or something,” he continued. “But no, we chatted. I actually met her out in the parking lot. We talked for a couple of minutes, decided to go on a date and talked for a little bit. We went to the park with her dog, got some sushi, hung out for the night and that’s when we got spotted by the paparazzi is picking up sushi.”
In December 2024, cameras did in fact catch Tanner and Julianne, 38, walking around a shopping center in Studio City, Calif. They appeared to stop by The Shops at Sportsmen’s Lodge, which features various shopping, dining and wellness businesses.
“It was very short-lived,” Tanner explained of the pair’s brief tryst. “Julianne’s great, but it was never anything more than just, like, a single singular date.”
Podcast cohosts Charity Lawson and Rachel Recchia dug a little deeper and asked if it was a singular date because of her side.
“Yeah, I think so,” Tanner replied. “I blew it, guys.”
Tanner appeared on Charity’s season of The Bachelorette in 2023 before signing up for Bachelor in Paradise the same year.
While he didn’t find his happily ever after on the ABC reality franchise, the personal trainer was romantically linked to another beloved reality star — Brittany Cartwright.
According to Tanner, however, he was always just friends with The Valley star.
“Brittany’s great. When I first moved out to L.A., I knew nothing about reality TV. I never watched Vanderpump Rules,” he recalled. “I went to the sports bar. It was called Jax’s. I met this owner named Brittany. She’s from Kentucky and she’s bubbly and nice. We started talking, and then I posted a picture with us on Instagram.”
Fans started speculating online in August 2024 that the pair were a hot new couple. Ultimately, Tanner said they were “always just friends.”
“The media just ran away with the story. It was never anything more than a friendship with us,” he said. “But Brittany’s great. And her friends are awesome. It was always just a friendship. There was never anything more there.”
