News that One Tree Hill star Sophia Bush was dating former US women’s national soccer team player Ashlyn Harris went public on October 17, 2023—just six days after the world learned of Harris’ split from her wife and former teammate Ali Krieger (though Harris actually filed for divorce a month prior). At the time, many fans believed Harris had an affair with Bush, who had filed for divorce from Grant Hughes this past summer after 13 months of marriage.
Bush and Harris have both vehemently denied the cheating rumors. “Let me be clear: I did not step out on my marriage,” Harris wrote in a lengthy Instagram note in November. “I was always faithful in my marriage, if not always totally happy.” You can read the post in its entirety here.
In her April cover essay for Glamour, Bush revealed that she and Harris met in 2019 but grew closer through a support group of friends going through divorces. “I didn’t expect to find love in this support system,” Bush writes. “I don’t know how else to say it other than: I didn’t see it until I saw it. And I think it’s very easy not to see something that’s been in front of your face for a long time when you’d never looked at it as an option and you had never been looked at as an option. What I saw was a friend with her big, happy life. And now I know she thought the same thing about me.”
Bush says she eventually decided to ask Harris to a one-on-one lunch after friends pointed out their strong connection, writing, “That meal was four and a half hours long and truly one of the most surreal experiences of my life thus far.” While unpacking the initial backlash to their relationship, Bush said she was “absolutely in awe” of Harris’s “relentless integrity.”
