Podcast host Brianna Chickenfry is opening up about her budding relationship with country singer Zach Bryan.
The social media star (whose real name is Brianna LaPaglia) revealed on a new episode of her BFFs podcast that although she and Bryan first met briefly in May, they didn’t start dating until he slid into her DMs — and they’ve since enjoyed an 18-hour road trip together.
“He’s like, the nicest, most genuine person I’ve ever met. He’s so normal,” she told cohosts Dave Portnoy, Josh Richards and Grace O’Malley. “We did a f—in’ 18-hour car ride together and… didn’t turn the music on once and talked the whole time. That’s when I knew, like, oh this guy’s actually awesome. We got to know each other.”
She added: “We’ve been spending a lot of time together.”
LaPaglia, 24, first met the “Something in the Orange” singer at the 2023 ACM Awards in May, where they briefly posed for a photo together.
Bryan was dating ex-girlfriend Deb Peifer at the time, while LaPaglia was seeing her boyfriend Joey. She told her podcast cohosts that she and the singer “didn’t say anything to each other” other than when she asked him for a photo.
Then on June 23, LaPaglia joined Bryan onstage alongside Richards and others during his show at Forest Hills Stadium in New York City — and although they did not speak at the show, they began chatting a few days later.
“I was still with my boyfriend at the concert. And then, a few days later, me and Joey break up. And [Bryan] had already broken up with his girlfriend, and then he f—in’ slid into my DMs,” she explained. “I made a podcast after we went onstage and was like, ‘Eat the rich besides Zach Bryan’ and he posted it and then he DM’d me and said, ‘That was so sweet, thank you guys for coming.’ And then we just started chatting.”
LaPaglia said she wanted to clarify the timeline for listeners, as their relationship “didn’t all just happen at once,” and she had hoped to keep it under wraps for as long as possible.
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“I thought we were just going to get away with it for a little bit, ‘cause I knew what the reaction was going to be, because I just got out of a relationship, he just got out of a relationship,” she said, adding that she’s been getting “a lot of hate.”
At one point during the podcast, LaPaglia confirmed that she was calling in from Oklahoma, Bryan’s home state — and the singer even popped his head in briefly to say hello.
The Grammy-nominated star, who has been teasing an upcoming new album, announced his split from Peifer in May.
“Things are mutual between us, we’re leaving with plenty [of] memories and good times,” he wrote on Twitter at the time. “I beg so much that everyone respects her and my privacy through a hard time.”
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