11 Celebrity Couples Whose Romances Started In The DMs

Kelsea Ballerini slid into Chase Stokes’ DMs after the two started following each other on Instagram. "I've never seen his show, but I just knew of him, and I just swan dove right on in," Ballerini explained on Call Her Daddy in February 2023. Her first message was simple. “His handle is @hichasestokes, and I said, 'Hi, Chase Stokes.' "

Vanessa Hudgens and Cole Tucker met during a Zoom group meditation. "I get on the Zoom, and I'm like, 'Who is that?'" Hudgens explained on The Drew Barrymore Show, per People. "If I want something or someone, I'm going after them. I fully just slid into his DMs and was like, 'Hey, it was nice to meet you.' So I think there is no shame in making the first move."

Simone Biles and Jonathan Owens technically met on the dating app Raya, but it really went down in the DMs. "He would say I slid into his DMs," Biles told the Wall Street Journal in July 2021. “I saw him and I was like, 'Oh, he's pretty cute,' so I said hi ... and then I saw that he was in the Houston area, so we started chatting a little bit, and then we went to hang out a week or two later."

During an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live in January 2018, Sarah Hyland shared the story of how she and Wells Adams went from flirting on Twitter to going on an IRL date. "He slid into my DMs," she said. "I was following him [on Twitter], we had tweeted each other, and I thought he was funny and he was a fan of the show [Modern Family] ... so I just thought, I saw him as the bartender [on Bachelor in Paradise], and I was like, 'That's really cute,' and I was single, obviously, and I was like, this is really awesome." The DM that started it all? According to Hyland, Adams wrote: "Next time I’m in L.A., I’m taking you out for drinks and tacos."

Dylan Sprouse and Barbara Palvin initially met at a party, but — as the couple confirmed during a February 2019 interview with W — Sprouse followed up their introduction by sliding into her DMs. "She followed me, so I was like, I guess I'll give her something," Sprouse told the magazine. "I was like, 'Hey, I don't know if you're in New York for very long, but we should hang out if you want to. Here's my number.'"

Apparently, it took six months for Palvin to respond. "I knew I wasn't in a good mindset at the time, and maybe deep inside I knew that it could be something more," the model explained to W. In those six months, Sprouse booked a movie and moved to China for filming. One day on the shoot, his manager asked him if there was anything he wished he'd "wrapped up" before he left. Sprouse admitted to W that Palvin immediately came to mind, and 10 minutes later, she texted him.

According to Sophie Turner's March 2019 interview with Harper's Bazaar UK, her relationship with Joe Jonas all started in 2016 with a direct message. When asked how the two met, Turner said friends intended to set them up, but Jonas was the one who made the first move. "We had a lot of mutual friends," she explained, "and they'd been trying to introduce us for a long time. We were following each other on Instagram and he direct-messaged me one fine day, out of the blue."

Apparently flirty DMs run in the Jonas fam? Though Nick Jonas and Priyanka Chopra first connected through DMs, their mutual friend, Graham Rogers — who co-starred with Jonas in 2015's Careful What You Wish For and acted alongside Chopra in Quantico — def played a part as well. As Rogers told Vogue in a December 2018 interview, Jonas was enamored with the TV star and sent Rogers a text saying, "Priyanka. Is. Wow."

Then, with Rogers' encouragement, Jonas worked up the courage to DM Chopra on Twitter in September 2016. "I'm hearing from a few mutual friends that we should meet," he told Vogue during the December 2018 interview. Apparently, Chopra responded that same day, and they began an epic text convo that went on for six months until they finally came face-to-face at the 2017 Vanity Fair Oscars party.

In February 2019, Bachelor alum Ben Higgins introduced his IG followers to his new girlfriend Jessica Clarke with a post, writing, "'I've been selfishly keeping this girl to myself for too long! Hey friends meet @jessclarke_! I successfully slid into her Dm's a few months ago. I took a risk and I am glad I did."

Higgins told the story of how it all went down during an episode of his podcast Almost Famous. According to Higgins, Clarke first came on his radar when he was in Nashville for a charity event in August 2018. While looking at the top posts near his location on IG, he spotted Jessica's photo with her dad from a nearby Nashville Predators hockey game. He was immediately smitten, but apparently, he didn't work up the courage to shoot his shot until November 2018.

On his podcast, Higgins said he sent a direct message to the effect of, "If you're single, please message me back." Because Clarke didn't recognize Higgins from The Bachelor, she initially ignored it, but when she finally did give it a read, she admitted she thought it was "hilarious" and "very cute," according to Higgins, and she messaged him back.

Mandy Moore met her musician husband, Taylor Goldsmith, through Instagram, though she made her interest known in a subtle way. Because she was a fan of his band Dawes, she shared a photo of their album cover on IG, and apparently, Goldsmith got word of her post and slid into her inbox. "Somehow, Taylor saw it and sent a note to me," she explained to People in October 2017. "We started emailing back and forth, then we went on a date and the rest is history. Thanks, Instagram, for helping me meet my fiancé!"

Nick Viall and Natalie Joy’s romance also started in the DMs. He told E! in June 2022, "I think DMs are a great place to meet people," he recalled. "My current girlfriend slid in my DMs. Real clever, it said, ‘You're unreal.' I guess it was funny. I was more curious, wondering why I was unreal."

Kyle Kuzma and Winnie Harlow’s relationship was born in the DMs — but it took two tries. Kuzma first messaged the model in 2019, but they didn’t connect until March 2020. "At the top of quarantine, he DMed me again … He shot his shot. He slid in the DMs," Harlow said on The Ellen Degeneres Show in June 2021. "That was cute. I was like, 'Oh hey, how's quarantine been?' "