Is this the modern era's Boston Rob and Amber Mariano?!
In the latter half of Survivor season 45, a showmance began to blossom between alliance members Dee Valladares and Austin Li Coon. And after several episodes of hand-holding, helicopter rides and, okay, some lies, the twosome found themselves sitting next to one another on the Dec. 20 finale, verbally battling it out for the title of Sole Survivor. (Oh, and Jake O'Kane was there, too!)
Ultimately, the jury chose to award the $1 million prize to Dee in a 5-3 vote over her island boyfriend, due in large part to her key decision to not tell Austin she betrayed him in an early vote until they were in front of their eliminated castaways. Strategic and savage!
But as it turned out, Austin wasn't too upset.
"Girls are better at playing guys than the other way around!" the grad student told Jeff Probst with a laugh after the votes were read. "All good!"
While Dee and Austin's relationship became the main focus of season 45's finale, which was filmed months ago, their current relationship status was still TBD.
Until now.
"You're not going to like my answer," Dee told Entertainment Weekly when asked for an update on her romance with Austin. "This has been a whirlwind of emotions and we have decided to keep it low key for now. It's been too crazy and it's getting crazier. So we've decided to keep it low key for now, only because it's been insane."
Um, so what does low key mean exactly?
"Keep it low key is you'll see pictures here and there," the entrepreneur explained, "but we're not going to focus on it right now because so much is happening in our lives, and yeah, we're just going to keep it low key for now."
Okay, so not much, but like a starving castaway on day 25 in front of a half-bag full of rice, we'll take what we can get!
Of course, Dee and Austin are far from the first pair to find love while attempting to outwit, outplay and outlast on the hit CBS reality series, following in the footsteps of Boston Rob and Amber, who famously got engaged on the show, and a twosome from season 44 that is still going strong.
Look back on all of Survivor's couples to find out who's still together and to see what Austin had to say about his relationship with Dee:
Survivor season 46 premieres February 2024 on CBS.