- “Love Is Blind” season seven featured a cast of singles from the Washington, DC area.
- Ashley and Tyler, two professionals in their 30s, were one of seven couples to get engaged.
- At the reunion, they confirmed their marriage status and talked about their off-screen controversy.
Warning: Spoilers ahead for the “Love Is Blind” season seven reunion.
The “Love Is Blind” season seven weddings finally answered the question of which couples tied the knot. The reunion confirmed that both season seven couples, including Tyler and Ashley, were still married.
In the season finale, which aired October 23, 34-year-old account manager Tyler and 31-year-old marketing director Ashley became one of only two couples to make it to the altar. After getting engaged with remarkably little drama in the pods, they were one of six pairs that producers chose to follow on a post-engagement vacation to Mexico.
Early in the season, Ashley and Tyler had a relatively dissonance-free storyline. However, it was complicated later on by Tyler’s revelation in episode nine that he had been a sperm donor for a female friend and her wife — something that hadn’t come up pre-engagement in the pods.
But this is “Love Is Blind,” and much of the drama happens outside of the millions of eyes (and in turn, subscribers) that Netflix brings to each new season.
News that Tyler had fathered children broke on social media before it was ever addressed on the show, and claims that Tyler was more than a distant sperm donor to his children circulated as well. Ultimately, the controversy is still good for Netflix’s bottom line — even if it’s happening off-screen, it’s keeping “Love Is Blind” in the conversation.
In addition to their relationship status, Tyler and Ashley addressed the off-screen controversy at the reunion.
Ashley and Tyler bond in the pods and make it all the way to the altar
In episode one, Ashley is enamored by Tyler’s nerves on their first date. They also bond over their shared love of cooking and food, their religious faith, and the fact that they both used to ride horses.
In the same episode, Tyler opens up to Ashley about how hard his mother worked to raise him and his siblings after his grandmother died and his grandfather cut his mother off. As a result, he says, he wants to have a “big family” — someone with whom he could share his love.
The couple celebrates Tyler’s birthday on a date in episode three. Tyler proposes to Ashley, and she accepts. Later in that episode, they meet in person for the first time — and luckily, producers choose them to take the post-engagement trip to Mexico with five of the other couples.
Unlike some of the other couples, Ashley and Tyler don’t have any significant on-camera tension while on vacation. All in all, the first batch of episodes, which premiered on October 2, leaves their relationship in a good place.
Netflix
In episode eight, things continue moving along as Tyler gets Ashley’s father’s blessing. But things take a major turn in episodes nine and 10: Cameras capture Ashley and Tyler debriefing about an off-screen conversation in which he revealed that he already fathered three children.
Tyler tells Ashley that he served as a sperm donor for a female friend and her wife, who wanted to have a child. He also told her that the children didn’t know what he looked like, and said that he wouldn’t be upset if Ashley decided she didn’t want to get married because he’d initially kept this information from her.
“I’m not upset by you trying to help a couple have kids. I think that’s admirable in certain ways, but the issue comes in with me feeling like I was not getting the full picture of you,” Ashley says in episode nine. “And once you’re not given the full picture of something, it’s hard to not question everything.”
But the couple patches things up, and Ashley tells Tyler in episode 11 that she still wants to marry him — though she warns him that any similar revelations going forward may put that in jeopardy. Later in that episode, they make good on one of Ashley’s pre-marriage wishes: going skydiving with her fiancé.
In the season seven finale, Ashley and Tyler go on their respective bachelorette and bachelor parties, and then get married. They end the ceremony by jumping the broom — a wedding tradition with roots in American slavery, when Black slaves weren’t able to legally wed and jumped a broom instead. Today, some Black Americans have reclaimed the tradition, incorporating it into their weddings as Ashley and Tyler did.
Ashley and Tyler are still married — and said that their on-screen conversations didn’t tell the full story
Netflix
At the season seven reunion, Tyler and Ashley confirmed that they were still married. Tyler said that the almost-year that they had been married had brought “growth.” Before the show premiered, they lived in a “bubble” — but after, they were subject to online commentary about their relationship.
In early October, soon after the first batch of episodes premiered on Netflix, allegations circulated online that Tyler had fathered three children, but lied to women that he’d dated about it. Photos appearing to show Tyler posing with the children, including one showing him wearing a shirt that says “Dope dad raising dope kids” while holding two of them, circulated online.
Of course, Ashley and Tyler addressed his children — and the fact that he didn’t mention them in the pods — on the show. But what he told Ashley appears to contradict what people are saying online: namely, that the children don’t know what he looks like.
Bri Thomas, a woman who identified herself online as the mother of Tyler’s children, said that Tyler, who she said was her best friend at the time, had served as a sperm donor for her and her wife. However, after she and her wife separated, Bri said that Tyler became a co-parent to that child, and they later conceived twins naturally together.
According to Bri, the twins even have Tyler’s last name. Bri said that she and Tyler didn’t date, and she supported his decision to go on the show. However, she said that Tyler hadn’t seen the children since September 30, 2023, the day before he left for filming.
Tyler and Ashley didn’t explicitly address the controversy while the show was still airing. But after someone accused Tyler on Instagram of “trying to delete your past,” he told them to “just be patient” and that he would “explain it all very soon.”And on Tuesday, the day before the reunion aired on Netflix, he reposted a morning prayer from the Instagram account @kingofsolomon on his story.
“Help me to turn my trials into my testimonies,” one bolded phrase in the prayer reads.
At the reunion, the couple finally spoke about how the controversy had played out both on- and off-screen.
“Those kids, that family, they did not sign up for this,” Tyler said of the online controversy.
Tyler said that he had helped his friend and her wife have a child. After his friend’s wife “left her high and dry,” he decided to help his friend out with the children. According to Tyler, that’s why he had been photographed spending time with the kids.
He did not explicitly name Bri as the friend. Bri did not immediately respond to an Instagram DM request for comment sent outside standard business hours.
“Ashley knows all this. This is news to the world. This has never been news to us,” he said. “I’m giving this explanation now, because I feel like the world is waiting for it. But I don’t owe anyone an explanation but my wife.”
Ashley said that what viewers had seen wasn’t the full picture and that she and Tyler had an off-camera conversation before they filmed their discussion about the issue. She said that while Tyler didn’t want to speak about it on camera, she felt that they needed to address it so that she would be able to continue participating in the show.
However, Ashley said that there was some information that Tyler wasn’t comfortable sharing on camera. In turn, she said that Tyler had lied to the cameras that the children didn’t know what he looked like.
“Of course he divulged that information to me,” Ashley said.
The couple said that they weren’t letting online chatter affect their relationship.
“When I said ‘I do,’ I said ‘I do’ to all of it. I was aware and I took on what I wanted to,” Ashley said. “And this is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of love. This is a rarity, and it’s something that is worth risking anything for.”
“Love Is Blind” season seven, including the reunion, is now streaming on Netflix.