Inside Married Ice Dancing Duo Madison Chock and Evan Bates’ Romance

Madison Chock and Evan Bates both remember the moment everything changed. 

The Team USA ice dancers — widely regarded as the best duo in the world and the favorites to win gold at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Italy — were originally paired together in 2011. 

Over time, however, their professional partnership blossomed into something more. 

“There’s definitely a moment that I recall,” Bates, 36, exclusively told Us Weekly alongside Chock, 33, via their partnership with Nulo. “We skated together for five years and it was just a friendship, but the friendship was good. From day one we always had a connection. We were laughing, we enjoyed our time together. It made skating so fun. Over the five years, we had success, but also didn’t have success. We had a lot of trying times. In those trying times, I really realized how much I relied on Maddie and really felt connected to her in a way that went beyond just as a skating partner.”

Olympic Ice Dancers Evan Bates and Madison Chock’s Relationship Timeline 

As the pair prepared to compete at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, Bates had the impression “it was going to be the end of the road for us as a career.”

“I remember thinking, ‘I can’t really imagine one day walking out of the rink and going our separate ways, being friends and just not seeing each other anymore,’’’ Bates said. “I made the realization, I shared the realization and, luckily, the realization was reciprocated. That changed everything in our relationship and our partnership.”

Bates added, “Since that moment, we’ve been pretty much inseparable.”

Chock remembers the moment, too, admitting she was “so surprised” by Bates’ admission.

“It really just came out of the blue for me,” she told Us. “I knew we always had an incredible chemistry. We had so much fun together. We were great friends. Training was always fun because we always just got along. We had the same work ethic. But when he told me how he felt, I was so surprised because I didn’t see it coming at all.”

Chock continued, “When I really sat with it and thought about it, I was like, ‘Wait a minute. I feel the same things about you. This is incredible.’”

The couple got married in Hawaii in June 2024.

“Our day-to-day life is certainly very similar, if not completely unchanged with training and our typical routine that we have gotten used to over the years,” Chock said of life as husband and wife. “But I would say after we got married there was definitely a shift in the emotional connection and pull towards each other. It’s definitely much stronger.”

Evan Bates, Madison Chock
Evan Bates, Madison Chock Courtesy of Nulo

Chock added, “It’s very rooted in love and our commitment to each other, and our commitment in wanting to continue to improve as people moving forward and be the best partners we can be to each other.”

With the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy, on the horizon, Chock and Bates have partnered with Nulo’s “Fuel Incredible” campaign, designed to highlight the unique bond between athletes and their pets.

Team USA’s Dating Histories: Inside the Winter Olympians’ Love Lives

Chock and Bates are parents to toy poodles Stella, 13, and Henry, 9. 

“Henry and Stella are a huge part of our lives,” Chock said. “Skating is a huge part, but Henry and Stella are right there along with us. They’re really an active part of our entire day.”

During training, Chock said both dogs “come with us to the rink on a daily basis.”

‘When we have a break, they run around and they greet everybody in the locker room,” Chock explained. “They just brighten spirits at the rink when everyone’s going through the ringer. Doing their run-throughs, having some grueling training sessions. Henry and Stella bring everybody so much joy.”

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Dax Shepard Offers to Pay for Daughter Delta, 11, to Freeze Her Eggs

Dax Shepard shared a wild promise with his 11-year-old daughter, Delta.

“Delta was saying how she can’t wait to have a baby,” Shepard, 51, said during the Monday, January 5, episode of his “Armchair Expert” podcast. “I said, ‘When do you think you’ll have your first child, when you turn 18?’ I want to be supportive of whatever.”

When his daughter responded with “no,” Shepard guessed that Delta would have her first child between 35 and 45 years old.

“I said, ‘If you want to, we’ll freeze your eggs when you’re 18.’ I’ll pay for you to get your eggs frozen so you don’t have to think about that,” the actor continued. Shepard’s podcast cohost Monica Padman praised his “lovely” gesture.

Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell’s Most Honest Parenting Quotes

According to Shepard, his daughter is “thinking mid-20s” is the perfect age to start having kids, but both he and Padman thought that Delta would be “underestimating” how much fun she’s having at that age.

“It won’t be time for her to be in the house every night with a child,” Shepard said.

Shepard shares Delta and daughter Lincoln, 12, with wife Kristen Bell.

Both Shepard and Bell, 45, have been candid about their parenting styles in several interviews over the years. Shepard’s podcast has also offered him a platform to discuss fatherhood.

Shepard previously discussed his daughters’ future dating lives during a 2023 episode of his podcast.

The actor confessed that he’s “not going to love seeing some 25-year-old dude in boxers in my kitchen” if the girls have adult “sleepovers” with their significant others as they get older. While he is “very pro-sex” and wants his daughters to be “very happy and adventurous” when it comes to love, he doesn’t want any of it happening under his own roof.

Kristen Bell and Dax Shepard’s Most Polarizing Comments Over the Years

One thing that is OK in Shepard and Bell’s home is cursing, however.

“I fully swear in front of my kids,” the actor said during a July 2025 episode of his podcast. “They are allowed to swear, not with impunity, but when it’s called for, and they land it, and it’s in the house and not out at a restaurant, it’s OK.”

He added, “My defense of it is, I just told the girls, like, ‘Hey, these are noises that come out of your mouth, and you assign what they mean to you.’”

Shepard explained that he thinks of this way, there’s “no way” that he’s introducing the girls to cursing.

Bell previously discussed this same subject during a 2020 appearance on Good Morning America. The Frozen star recalled Lincoln saying: “You never told me f*** was a bad word,” when coming home from school one day.

“Dax has, yet again, the best response,” she recalled. “He said, ‘Listen, you’re a kid. There are a lot of things you can’t do until you’re an adult. One of them is drive my car. One of them is drink alcohol. Vote. And say swear words.’ It’s as simple as that.”

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Noah Cyrus Hot Shots to Celebrate Her 26th Birthday!

Noah Cyrus is turning 26 today, so we’re flooding your timeline with her sexiest pics and a little game of trivia about the indie-pop darling. While the biblical Noah saved pairs of animals from the rain, our Noah reined in her assets from the…


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5 Worst TV Shows of 2025, Ranked — No. 1 Has a 36 Percent Rotten Tomatoes Score

While 2025 certainly had some great TV shows, it also had a lion’s share of terrible series.

If we’re gonna talk about the best of 2025, then we naturally have to talk about the worst. Not every show is gonna be a hit, not every season 1 is an Emmy nominee. Many of them simply head to the trash — and some trash even gets a second season.

Watch With Us is rounding up the very bottom of our TV watches this year, from an ill-fated Suits spinoff to a goofy political thriller starring Robert De Niro.

We’ve picked and ranked the five worst shows that 2025 had to offer.

7 Best Ryan Murphy Shows, Ranked: From ‘American Horror Story’ to ‘Scream Queens’

5. ‘Pulse’ — Netflix

If The Pitt was the best medical drama of 2025, then Pulse may have been the worst. The show follows a group of surgical and emergency residents at Maguire Hospital, a trauma center in Miami, as they all vie for the same thing: the position of Emergency Medicine Chief Resident. The residents navigate their personal and professional lives as they handle various medical crises while dealing with the fallout of a massive scandal at their place of work.

Pulse ultimately failed to charm both reviewers and audiences, and it was justifiably canceled shortly after its disappointing debut. Critics ultimately found that Pulse went all-in on tired tropes without doing enough to set it apart from the other hospital dramas like Breathless or even the 86th season of Grey’s Anatomy. If it’s just another medical procedural show, then why not watch something that actually elevates itself like The Pitt? Despite some good acting, poor plotting, annoying characters and a questionable depiction of sexual harassment made this show is one to skip.

4. ‘Zero Day’ — Netflix

Robert De Niro stars as George Mullen, a former United States president who is brought out of retirement by his successor to handle a very special assignment. Mullen has been assigned as head of a group investigating a massive, global cyberterrorist attack that resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent people. You see a new prestige series starring an acting tour de force like De Niro and you think, “How could it go wrong?”

Well, when it comes to Zero Day, it can go very wrong. The political thriller executive produced by Noah Oppenheim (A House of Dynamite) ends up a totally forgettable experience — a mealy-mouthed commentary on hot-button issues that fails to deliver anything of substance. Even the additional star power of Angela Bassett, Jesse Plemons and Connie Britton can’t help poor screenwriting and middling tension.

3. ‘Monster: The Ed Gein Story’ — Netflix

This is not the first time that Ryan Murphy‘s name will grace this list since the highly prolific showrunner committed multiple crimes against television this year. But perhaps the less offensive to the tastes was Monster: The Ed Gein Story, although it’s really a “lesser of two evils” situation. The third installment of the Monster anthology series follows the life of notorious serial killer Ed Gein while examining his influence on pop culture and true crime.

Critics somehow managed to find more value in Monster: The Ed Gein Story than this list’s next inclusion, All’s Fair, which sports an impressive 6 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes compared to Monster’s 22 percent. The main high point of the show is the ensemble cast’s across-the-board great performances and some stellar production design as well. However, most found Monster to be a repulsive contortion of Gein’s persona while failing to meaningfully comment on pop culture — the only thing Monster: The Ed Gein Story does is indulge in the very thing it wishes to admonish.

2. ‘All’s Fair’ — Hulu

The only reason All’s Fair isn’t number one on this list is that while the show was universally panned by critics, it received enough hate-watches from audiences to justify its continued existence — but just barely. It’s one of those Emily in Paris situations, where the car crash on the side of the road makes drivers wanna crane their necks and get a good look, even though they shouldn’t. It’s the same situation with All’s Fair,  Murphy’s legal drama about an all-female law firm in Los Angeles that managed to clinch a series renewal.

A show that receives the moniker from numerous critics as being “one of the worst shows ever made” is unfortunately going to get a lot of people to watch out of curiosity for how exactly a show could be that bad. In the end, All’s Fair isn’t even a “so bad it’s good” situation because the show is too boring, too shallow and poorly written, to be entertainingly awful, all while helmed by an absolutely forgettable performance from Kim Kardashian.

1. ‘Suits LA’ — Peacock

The television “Flop of the Year” award goes to Suits LA, a remarkably ill-conceived spinoff of Suits predicated on the fact that people enjoyed checking out Suits when it was added to Netflix. But trying to exploit the streaming success of an older show doesn’t mean that a creatively uninspired spinoff is going to generate the same success. The creators behind Suits LA seemed not to understand what made Suits so good to begin with, and instead of trying something new and interesting, they just create the same thing a second time — but worse.

33 Must-Watch TV Shows on Hulu Right Now (December 2025)

Suits LA simply tries to transpose the narrative of Suits onto a different setting, but without any of the writing, acting or editing that made the original a great, breezy and bingeable watch. Plus, the show already had a failed spinoff with Pearson back in 2019, which was cancelled after one season and starred one of Suits’ most compelling characters. If a show with an original character couldn’t work, why did they think they could capture magic with an all-new cast playing poorly-written characters? If All’s Fair at least has hate-watch intrigue, Suits LA absolutely has nothing to justify watching it.


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Zach Bryan Confirms Marriage to Samantha Leonard on Instagram

Zach Bryan has confirmed his marriage to Samantha Leonard.

Bryan, 29, took to Instagram on Wednesday, December 31, and shared a black-and-white photo of him carrying Leonard, 28, as she sported a strapless white bridal gown with a feathery hem. The happy couple smiled as Leonard held a wine glass.

“Tougher than the rest,” he captioned his post, which also included a video of him performing the Bruce Springsteen song with the same name at their wedding reception.

Earlier Wednesday, the country star was spotted holding Leonard in his arms after exchanging vows in Spain, multiple outlets reported. A video posted via Instagram showed the newlyweds laughing as they hopped into a convertible and drove off into the proverbial sunset. 

Singer Zach Bryan’s Dating History

The day before the wedding, Bryan shared a photo of him with his guy friends, adding a caption that cited lyrics from the Black Eyes Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling.” On December 29, Bryan posted a clip of him crooning a heartfelt song on the guitar that seemingly referenced his upcoming nuptials.

“I made a woman fall in love and made our young hearts cry,” he sang. “I’m on an aeroplane bound to Spain tonight.”

On Wednesday, Leonard posted a clip via her Instagram Stories in which she and Bryan touched down on an airplane.

The couple were first linked in August. That October, Bryan paid tribute to his new love via Instagram, writing, “From bull runs to all the bulls***, today is your birthday and I love you Samantha Marie. To the only woman who can hike six miles in Chanel flats, skydive over the alps and catch a bigger fish than me all in the same day. Hope your day was as graceful as you are.”

Brianna Chickenfry Says Zach Bryan Picked Out an Engagement Ring for Her 

Sparks flew between Bryan and Leonard one year after his not-so-amicable split with Brianna “Chickenfry” LaPaglia, whom he dated from the summer of 2023 up to fall 2024. 

“Brianna and me [sic] have broken up with each other and I respect and love her with every ounce of my heart. She has loved me unconditionally for a very long time and for that, I’ll always thank her,” Bryan said in a statement in October 2024. “I’ve had an incredibly hard year personally and struggled through some pretty severe things. I thought it would be beneficial for both of us to go our different ways. I am not perfect and never will be.”

LaPaglia, 26, has said that the breakup blindsided her and accused Bryan of being emotionally abusive. (Us Weekly reached out for comment at the time. Bryan hasn’t responded to the allegations.)

LaPaglia’s fans, meanwhile, have noted the physical resemblance between her and Leonard.

“Next question is [one] that I got a million times. ‘What do you think about Zach’s girlfriend looking exactly like you?’” LaPaglia said during an October episode of her “Plan Bri Uncut” podcast. “I think that is narcissism textbook 101, like, that’s what narcissists do. They just go and find another version of you to date.”

She continued, “People are like, ‘Are you creeped out? Are you mad? Are you flattered?’ I am flattered to be honest. I dyed my hair so that people [would] stop sending me every single picture that he posts of her, and I blocked him. I don’t wanna see this [and] I don’t want to indulge in anything that he does.”


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Andy Cohen, Anderson Cooper Detail Ryan Seacrest Texts on New Year’s Eve

Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper closed out 2025 and welcomed 2026 with their annual CNN’s New Year’s Eve Live special.

The Bravo star, 57, and the journalist, 58, cohosted the broadcast from New York City’s Times Square for the ninth consecutive year on Wednesday, December 31.

“Bottoms up: This is tequila!” Cohen declared before doing a shot with Cooper to open the show. Afterward, the cohosts spoke about 2025 highlights, including a trip to Disneyland with their kids and watching Cher perform during an event for Saturday Night Live‘s 50th anniversary.

“Cher called me a couple weeks ago,” Cooper said, to which Cohen replied, “Did she ask for me?”

CNN’s ‘New Year’s Eve Live’: Most Controversial Moments Through the Years

Cooper jokingly recalled Cher saying of Cohen, “How’s that troublemaker?”

The cohosts also mentioned Ryan Seacrest, who hosts Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve on ABC.

“Did Ryan call you … or text you today?” Cooper asked Cohen, who responded, “He texted me, like, yesterday or the day before.”

Cooper said that Seacrest had texted him that morning. In past years, he noted, Seacrest had sent him gifts.

Anderson Cooper Loses It Over Ralph Fiennes’ Take on Demure, Mindful Meme

“Like, a photo of himself?” Cohen asked.

“No,” Cooper said, adding that Seacrest had previously sent him tequila.

The longtime pals also discussed the hit hockey romance series Heated Rivalry, with Cohen telling Cooper, “Of the two of us, you’re Ilya and I’m Shane.”

“What?!” Cooper replied.

Andy Cohen and Anderson Cooper Return to Ripping Shots on CNN NYE Special

In addition to Cohen and Cooper’s signature banter, CNN’s New Year’s Eve Live featured performances by Robyn, Shakira, Brandy and Monica, Bryan Adams, Florence + The Machine, Raye, Brandi Carlile, Aloe Blacc, Patti LaBelle and Michelle Williams and special appearances by Stephen Colbert, Amy Sedaris, Rebecca Romijn and Jerry O’Connell, B.J. Novak, Leanne Morgan and Sarah Sherman.

Since Cohen joined the broadcast as Cooper’s cohost in 2017, the CNN New Year’s Eve special has consistently made headlines, perhaps most notoriously when the network banned the duo from drinking after Cohen shaded then-New York City mayor Bill de Blasio and Seacrest during the 2021-2022 show.

“Watching Mayor de Blasio do his victory lap dance after four years of the crappiest term as the mayor of New York — the only thing that Democrats and Republicans can agree on is what a horrible mayor he has been,” Cohen said at the time. “So sayonara, sucka. 2022! It’s a new year because guess what? I have a feeling I’m gonna be standing right here next year, and you know who I’m not going to be looking at dancing as the city comes apart? You!”

Cohen was similarly critical of the Seacrest-hosted Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve.

Anderson Cooper Loses It Over Ralph Fiennes’ Take on Demure, Mindful Meme

“If you look behind me, you’ll see Ryan Seacrest’s group of losers performing. … I’m sorry but if you’re watching ABC, you’re watching nothing,” he quipped. “We were doused with confetti from fake Journey on ABC. If it’s not Steve Perry, it doesn’t count! You get it? It’s not Journey! It’s propaganda! It’s propaganda! It’s not Journey! It’s not Journey! No, that was not Journey. Steve Perry is Journey.”

Cohen later apologized to Seacrest, 51, and the two made amends. Cohen and Cooper were still banned from drinking during the 2022-2023 broadcast, but their tequila shots tradition returned the following year.

Prior to the 2025-2026 show, Cooper and Cohen reflected on their favorite memories from their years of cohosting the New Year’s Eve special.

“We can’t talk about New Year’s Eve without talking about your many, many occasions of being in a puddle of giggles,” Cohen told Cooper in a CNN video earlier this month. “I say to people my job is to make you laugh on New Year’s because people love to hear you laugh. And I think God bless you for the work you do all year long. You’re keeping ‘em honest right here on CNN, and this is your time and all of our time to let loose and enjoy.”


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