Lucas Byrd spent this spring proving he belongs among the best wrestlers in the country. By late summer, he and girlfriend Ellie Holzman were spending their time proving something else entirely: that they are not, in fact, married.
The confusion traces back to a post on X that started circulating and quickly gathered steam, congratulating the Illinois wrestling standout and his longtime girlfriend on a wedding that never happened.
“Congrats to NCAA National Champion Lucas Byrd and his wife Ellie on their marriage!!!,” the post read, accompanied by two photos of the couple that onlookers mistook for wedding pictures.
Given that Byrd stands roughly 5-foot-5 and Holzman stands about 6-foot-2, a pairing already primed for internet fascination, the post spread fast.
Holzman wasn’t about to let the internet plan her future without her. She fired back on X with a mix of confusion and humor. “Well, this is news to us,” she wrote. “Hey @lukebyrd106 I guess we got married! Where should we honeymoon?”
The couple later addressed the rumor more directly in a video posted to Instagram, recorded while they watched a Fox News segment that had picked up the story and leaned heavily into jokes about their size difference. Holzman didn’t hold back her frustration with how the moment had been handled on air.
“For whatever reason this post on X decided to blow up today,” Holzman said in the video. “It was congratulating us on our marriage, which we have not gotten married yet.” She added a bit of levity to the situation, noting, “But if Vogue wants to plan our wedding, please contact us. This is false. We’re not married yet.”
Holzman made clear that the coverage itself, not just the mistaken premise, was what bothered her. She and Byrd have built a relationship in the public eye largely on their own terms, sharing their story through a joint TikTok account that has drawn hundreds of thousands of followers and individual clips reaching into the millions of views. Watching national commentators poke fun at their height gap struck a different chord than the usual social media banter.
“We usually don’t care about what people think. We wouldn’t be in this relationship if we cared what people think. It’s nothing new to us,” Holzman said. “Please leave us alone. We’re just trying to mind our own business. It’s easy to talk about people like this. We’re real people too with real feelings and real experiences.”
She closed with a pointed question about priorities in the news cycle. “Surely there are more important things to talk about on the news than this,” she added. Byrd echoed the sentiment with a blunt assessment of the segment: “It’s just tasteless for national television.”
The pair have never shied away from the attention their relationship draws, and for good reason. Byrd capped his senior season at Illinois by winning the NCAA championship at 133 pounds (60.3 kg), pinning Iowa’s Drake Ayala in just three minutes in the finals. It was a statement victory, avenging the only loss of his season, a narrow decision to Ayala earlier in the year, and it delivered Byrd his first national title after a career that included two All-American finishes.
What happened after the final whistle became just as memorable as the win itself. Byrd found Holzman in the crowd and wrapped her in a hug, a moment captured on camera. Commentating the match was UFC Hall of Famer Daniel Cormier, who couldn’t help narrating the embrace in real time with unmistakable enthusiasm.
“Volleyball girl over there. Got famous on TikTok. You can’t see her head cause she’s hugging his parents. Look, look…He loves her, Ellie. I think they’re wonderful together,” Cormier said on the broadcast.
Holzman built her own athletic résumé as an outside hitter at Illinois, earning recognition as the National Gatorade Player of the Year before a torn ACL cut her playing career short. She has since redirected that competitive energy into supporting Byrd, showing up at his matches and building the couple’s shared online presence, even as she has been candid in interviews about once hesitating over dating someone shorter than her before deciding the connection mattered more than inches.
