Better Off Wed
Soap Opera Digest: You worked on the same set for a year before getting together. What were your first impressions of each other?
Arianne Zuker (Nicole): When he came on the show, I noticed how charming and respectful he was to other women. As soon as we started working on the same set, we started talking to each other more, and I found out that he’s just a wonderful guy. He was definitely a lot more mature than a lot of 20-year-olds. I thought he was terrific.
Kyle Lowder (Brady): I have always known that she was one of the cooler people on-set. I didn’t really work with her before last summer [2001]. Then, there was the Last Blast Dance and the Puerto Rico stuff and we started to work more with each other and have fun on-set, joking around, hitting it off. Digest: Who made the first move?
Zuker: I think going out was sort of an accident. I had started going to movies by myself on Sundays, just to have time for me. We started talking about movies and we’d hang out, but I wasn’t thinking anything of it. Ali Sweeney [Sami] and I, Matt Cedeno [Brandon] and I have hung out, so it wasn’t strange. I think the first night we went out, that was it. That was kind of the ringer.
Lowder:Quite honestly, I never had any intention of saying, “Okay, I’m going to start dating this girl.” I just didn’t want to go there with the whole “Let’s start dating” thing; I wanted to be her good friend. One day, I asked her if she would like to go see a movie and found out that we were the kind of people who liked to go to movies by ourselves. I said, “Forget that, let’s go to the movies together.” We went out, had some dinner, went to the movies and then we went bowling. We just had a fun night. It got to a point where we really enjoyed spending time with each other and then it progressed from there. Digest: How did you “know”?
Zuker: It sort of flowed. It wasn’t an automatic, “Oh, my God, this is the guy.” It’s probably a feeling that you can never explain until you actually experience it. It was a feeling that I’ve never felt before. We didn’t even have to say anything to each other. We didn’t have to agree or talk to each other about it, we just knew. And that was it. The next thing you know, we were married. That’s how amazing it was.
Lowder: It’s true. Friends from college have said to me, “You’re gone for two years, you’re on a soap opera and you’re married! What the heck is going on?” So, a lot of my friends from back home are like, “Dude, what’s happening to you? Stop growing up so fast.” But I say to them, “Look guys, I can’t explain it, but you’ll find out some day.” It sounds so cliche, but you just know when you meet the right person. Digest: How long were you able to keep it a secret?
Lowder: We weren’t trying to hide anything. We didn’t talk about it because nobody asked. We weren’t going to walk into work holding hands and say, “Look at us!” When we’re at work, we’re very professional. When we show up at the work place, it’s time to do our jobs. We’re not going to pull the whole public display of affection thing. Nobody really needs to see that, anyway. Actually, only a few select people even knew we were dating at all.
Zuker: Because we were so serious about it, we wanted to wait until we knew it was going to last. We happened to get engaged pretty much right after we started dating.Digest: Did you ever think it was happening too fast?
Zuker: It felt very natural. I feel like I’ve known Kyle forever.
Lowder:I think we’ve always taken chances with each other, and I think that’s what has kept things interesting for us and kept things in perspective.Digest: Kyle, were you nervous about proposing?
Lowder:I wasn’t really nervous until the actual event. I didn’t know how she was going to take it, but we have such an open relationship. We talk about everything, absolutely everything. There are no secrets, nothing has fallen by the wayside with us. We had a conversation about [getting engaged] and both of us were right there, so that took a lot of the pressure off. I asked her father and her brother for her hand and then bought the ring. Again, another thing that just hit me. I didn’t say, “Okay, tomorrow I’m going to do it.” It came to me on a whim: Today’s the day.
Conversation
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