This story originally appeared on Them.
Out100 honoree Sophia Bush sat down with host Alex Cooper on the megapopular podcast Call Her Daddy this week to clear up misconceptions about her relationship timeline with soccer star and fellow Out100 honoree Ashlyn Harris, denying longstanding rumors that their connection began with cheating. Online sapphics, you should be seated.
During the episode, posted to YouTube on Wednesday, the One Tree Hill alum opened up about all manner of topics, including the abuse she says she faced during her time on the 2000s teen drama, past marriages, and her relationship with retired women’s soccer champion Ashlyn Harris, to whom she is now lovingly married.
When online sapphics sleuths suspected that Bush and Harris were dating in 2023, despite having significant others at the time, rumors of infidelity swirled around the internet and cheating accusations filled the comments sections of their posts.
“The internet had a lot to say,” Cooper said of that period on the podcast.
Here is the timeline of their respective breakups and how the couple got together, as laid out by Bush in the interview with Cooper.
When did Ashlyn Harris and Sophia Bush meet?
Though Bush officially confirmed their relationship in a cover story with Glamour magazine in 2024, the pair has known each other for quite some time, having been Instagram mutuals from 2015 onward. They didn’t meet in person until a group luncheon for artists and activists in 2019, which was hosted by some of Harris’ teammates. But sparks didn’t fly, Bush said, until after both parties had filed for divorce from their then-spouses, Grant Hughes and Ali Krieger, respectively.
When did Sophia Bush and Ashlyn Harris separate from their former partners?
Bush and Hughes separated on June 27, 2023, a little over a month after their first wedding anniversary, and filed for divorce in August 2023. “You keep pretending it's okay even when you’re not sleeping in the same bed, even when you’re living on separate floors of your house, even when your parents know you are not sleeping at all and miserable,” Bush shared on Call her Daddy
At the same time, Bush realized that many of her friends were experiencing similar situations regarding marriages, separations, and divorces. In September of the same year, Harris filed for divorce from Krieger.
When did romantic feelings begin between Ashlyn Harris and Sophia Bush?
Later that same year, Bush and her friends — whom she cheekily referred to on Call Her Daddy as the “lesbian mafia in New York,” — were sharing profiles of potential dates, including a “very beautiful person” whom Harris was going to be set up with. This brought out some unexpected feelings of jealousy in Bush, the actress shared. At that point, she says she had never dated a woman nor come out publicly.
On the podcast, Bush said she’d originally been trying to gather the courage to ask Harris out, sharing, “I’m a little bit of a chicken shit.” She ended up asking Harris out during a layover in New York while on a family trip after running into her at a mutual friend’s event. Still, she clarified that deciding to ask Harris out wasn’t done on a whim and refuted allegations that she must’ve gotten drunk and had an affair.
“Anyone who thinks that was a casual leap for me doesn't know me,” Bush said. “I was so nervous to say something to her that I did it at an event for a friend that I was only at because I was on a stopover on my way on a trip with my family. [...] I was like, ‘Well, I’m leaving the country, so this is perfect because I’m leaving the country and if she says no, I can cry into my mother’s arms for nine days overseas and come back and pretend this never happened.’”
After a lot of thinking and convincing from friends, Bush says she ended up working up the courage to ask Harris on a dinner date, which transformed how the pair saw each other. “Suddenly someone I never blinked at, I can’t breathe around,” Bush explained to Cooper. “And later obviously we both talked about [how] it was the weirdest thing. It felt like meeting a new person. Everything in my body just clicked and I was like, ‘Oh, this is what alignment feels like.’”
Having known and been friends with Harris for many years, Bush didn’t have the typical “ah-ha” moment regarding her now-wife.
“God, this sounds so gay,” Bush told Cooper. “It wasn’t just that I was attracted to her. It was like I went like, ‘Oh, are you the other piece of the puzzle? Does every weird little edge fit? And I would’'t have thought these puzzle pieces were related, but now they’re the last two and they click.”
So, did Ashlyn Harris and Sophia Bush cheat on their previous partners?
Bush maintains no. During the podcast, Cooper inquired about the internet speculation of infidelity and relationships with their exes overlapping one another. Bush replied definitively saying, “Two people who had filed for divorce and lived in separate residences from their exes went to dinner,” affirming that each was single when the pair went on their first date.
“Both of you filed for divorce,” Cooper confirmed to which Bush replied, “Yes.”
“OK. So, you can say there was no overlap,” Cooper continued.
“I can say that. Everybody wishes they could have done a million things differently at the time,” Bush said, “Like, do I wish that instead of flying home and stopping in New York cause I already had tickets to a comedy show and taking her on a date, I’d taken her on a date six weeks later? Yeah, of course I do. But I can’t change it. I can’t change my reality for anyone else. And I also can’t be my own personal definition of insanity, which is try[ing] the same thing over and over again with no result. I’m never going to change anybody’s mind who made it up.”
Even with all of the commotion caused by the swirling rumors, and long conversations with Harris about their previous marriages, the couple came to the conclusion that they did believe in that type of union and eventually wanted it again for themselves down the line.
Their engagement was never formally announced, with the public officially finding out about their marriage after it had happened through an exclusive excerpt from Bush’s memoir, And I Will Tell You Mine: Notes from a Life in Progress, that was published in Vogue on September 30.
Bush, who’s kept the details of popping the question private, revealed to Cooper that she ended up proposing to Harris. They both planned a small backyard weddin, tying the knot in summer 2025.
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