From coworkers to costars to friends to dating to exes! Chrishell Stause and Jason Oppenheim had serious history before taking their relationship to the next level in 2021.
The soap star met Jason and his twin brother, Brett Oppenheim, when she started working for The Oppenheim Group in 2018. During her first year at the agency, the group, which also includes Christine Quinn, Heather Rae Young, Maya Vander and Mary Fitzgerald, started filming the Netflix reality show Selling Sunset.
When the pair met, Stause had recently married Justin Hartley. The actress and the This Is Us star split in November 2019 while she was filming season 3, with Stause alleging she found out about the divorce petition via text message.
“Because of the crazy way in which this went down, people want answers, and I f—king want answers,” she told Fitzgerald on the 2020 season of the show. “I know people are saying we were only married two years, but it’s like, we were together for six years. … In a fight, that’s his go-to, you know? Like, ‘I’m out, I’m out.’ I hate that kind of impulsive stuff, but I always just thought, you know, that’s just an issue that we work through it.”
Following the divorce, Stause competed on Dancing With the Stars and was dragged into partner Gleb Savchenko’s messy split from his now-ex Elena Samodanova in November 2020. Both Stause and Savchenko denied that their relationship was anything but professional at the time. The real estate agent did, however, briefly date fellow professional dancer Keo Motsepe. They split in February 2021 after a few months of dating.
“Keo was caught in a web of lies,” a source told Us at the time. “He’s not denying the fact that he lied to her and is truly ashamed about something he did. … He genuinely loved her but made a big mistake. I don’t see them getting back together.”
Although he didn’t directly address the split, Motsepe told Entertainment Tonight in May 2021, “Everything that happens in life, people deal with things differently, and I deal with things differently. So I think for me personally, with everything in my life, I [turn to] music or dance, it just depends on the feeling at the moment.”
Fast-forward to the summer of 2021 — while the cast was seemingly taking a break from filming seasons 4 and 5 — Stause and Jason announced they are dating.
“Chrishell and I became close friends and it has developed into an amazing relationship,” he told Us Weekly in July 2021 statement when he confirmed they were dating. “I care about her deeply and we’re very happy together.”
In November 2021, Jason explained that their friendship provided the perfect base for an open and honest relationship.
“There was definitely a transition,” Jason told Us exclusively at the time. “We had been so open about what we were looking for with each other because we had become close friends. She knew my dating life, and we would almost joke about our each other’s dating lives and what we were looking for and things like that.”
He gushed, “I love her.”
Less than a month later, a source confirmed to Us Weekly that the Selling Sunset stars split before Christmas.
Scroll through for a timeline of Stause and Jason’s relationship and see the way they were: