Finding The One. Billie Lourd and Austen Rydell have preferred to keep details about their romance on the down low — but they have still offered glimpses at their road to happily ever after over the years.
The couple first sparked romance rumors in 2016 after they were spotted spending time together. Later that year, Lourd and Rydell briefly pulled the plug on their relationship. At the time, the actress moved on with her Scream Queens costar Taylor Lautner.
The Twilight star showed his support for Lourd after her mother, Carrie Fisher, died in December 2016 at age 60. Fisher’s mother, Debbie Reynolds, died one day later.
In 2017, the American Horror Story alum reunited with her ex-boyfriend after parting ways with Lautner. At the time, an eyewitness told Us Weekly that the duo attempted to be discrete when they attended an event in West Hollywood. Rydell watched as his girlfriend answered questions on the red carpet before they were spotted kissing inside of the film festival.
After four years of dating, Rydell and Lourd announced that they were engaged in June 2020. The California native secretly welcomed their first child together later that year.
Lourd clarified that her son was “not technically a quarantine baby” and was “conceived before” the coronavirus pandemic.
“He’s technically just a Caribbean baby,” Lourd joked in an interview with Bruce Bozzi in January 2021. “I got to keep it to myself, and only my family knew and nobody else knew. Everyone was so surprised when we posted that little picture of his feet, and it got to just be something I shared with the people I loved the most, which was so incredible and made my pregnancy so magical and wonderful, which I did not expect it was going to be, but it turned out to be the greatest experience.”
The new mom gushed about how much she “loved being pregnant” with her partner by her side. “Now we know each other better than anybody could ever know each other,” she detailed. “He was so caring and incredible and cooked for me and gave me foot massages and did these classes with me. Like, he did the lactation class, he did the positive birthing class. So he was with me every step of the way. And we just became even closer friends, even better partners. And I think it prepared us to be the best parents.”
Lourd also got honest about how her approach to motherhood differed from her late mother’s parenting style.
“My main job when she was alive was taking care of her and making sure she was OK,” she said on the “New Day” podcast in October 2021. “I was her main support, and I was 7, for a lot of the time, and that was really hard, and that’s why I grew up really fast because I was her best friend. I was her mother, I was her kid, I was her everything. And that’s one of the things I’m learning not to do with my kid.”
According to the Ticket to Paradise actress, her childhood involved plenty of “pressure,” adding, “There’s a lot of things that my mom taught me to do and then there’s a lot that is, honestly it might be more valuable, of what not to do. And that’s one of the things that I will not do to my son.”
Rydell, for his part, later praised Lourd’s love and commitment to their family. “This badass hot mom wife is 30!! She’s accomplished more, traveled further, and experienced more than anyone you’ve ever met at 30 and she is MY wife! Good luck finding a life partner like mine! I love you forever @praisethelourd !! ,” he wrote via Instagram in July 2022.
Scroll down to relive Lourd and Rydell’s romance: