Facts About Ryan Lochte's Life With Kayla Rae Reid
Ryan Lochte and his fiancée as of Oct. 9, Kayla Rae Reid, have in many ways a mundane relationship. She can't wait to replace his black leather sofa with cup holders in the armrests when they move from their Charlotte, North Carolina, home to Los Angeles; they'd dress their French bulldog puppy in his fun little camouflage-print vest more if he didn't fuss every time they tried to stuff him into it. And then there are the ways their life together is also deeply imbued with the bizarre things that happen to people when the world generally considers them VIPs. Their second date consisted of watching Justin Bieber perform at a nightclub; when Lochte forgot his passport on his way to tape Good Morning America to promote Dancing With the Stars, Reid urged him to do a security briefing without his ID because "I’ve know multiple celebrities that have forgotten their passports internationally and just went through security briefing." That list includes Paris Hilton, to which Lochte responded, "Well, I'm not Paris." (Reid did manage to speed home and back to the airport, and get his passport to him before his flight.)
These are just a few of the things you learn when you spend the day with the couple in the house they'll soon leave behind for the longer-lasting kind of fame - you know, the kind Paris has - they hope awaits them in L.A. Here are a few more.
1. They make art for each other. This is a piece Lochte made for Reid. It's a photo of the couple in Colorado Springs nestled inside a border of pieces of tissue paper Lochte spackled together with glue over the course of a couple weeks. "I took this arts and crafts class back in high school and I just remembered how I did it," Lochte recalled of his process. "I did 30 minutes here, 30 minutes there." Luckily, his house has a spare bedroom. "I did it on the floor. I had all this tissue paper with me," he said. "I was like, 'Don't go in that room!'" Reid called the piece "creative."
This is a piece Reid made for Lochte:
It's a painting of a Mother Theresa quote his grandmother, who recently passed away, lived by. "It wasn’t how I imagined it coming out," Reid said.
"It did come out good though, babe," Lochte told her.
"No. Not compared to other things that I’ve done," Reid insisted, before they both agreed that the paintings at her grandparents' house are something special.
2. Lochte writes love notes for Reid on Post-Its, and either leaves them in a place she'll discover as she goes about her day around the house, or tucks them into her wallet or purse. "So when she wakes up and she goes to look at herself in the mirror, sees 'You’re beautiful,'" said Lochte, who opened a cabinet in the kitchen to reveal a note stuck to the shelf holding a large plastic jar of what looks like some kind of protein powder. Reid looked on, unsurprised: "I didn't even open the fridge yet."
3. Reid aspires to become Lochte's personal nutrition coach, of sorts. Before Reid moved in with him, Lochte described his diet as "anything, everything" (to be clear, this included both fast food and Mountain Dew). Reid, conversely, is a pescatarian, but, as a former model, has had ample experience with even more restrictive diets. "I did paleo. I was vegan for two years. I did raw. I tried everything," she said. "Even at my skinniest, it was like, 'Lose more weight.'"
When she moved in with Lochte, who consumed an indiscriminate 6,000 to 8,000 calories a day during Olympics training, she introduced him to "all these foods that I’ve never even thought about eating," he said, like Brussels sprouts. "I’m just like, 'What are you doing to me?'"
"I would cook him tofu sausage, and he would not even know that it was fake sausage, and I’m just like, ha ha," said Reid. She's upbeat about the role she can play in Lochte's training for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. "I want to help him get deeper into the diet," she said. "Really push his abilities."
4. They want two or three kids. Just as Michael Phelps enjoyed something of an image renaissance at the Rio Games - in no small part thanks to his cheer squad having expanded from his mom to his mom, his now-wife, and their baby, who has more than enough Instagram followers to qualify as an "influencer" - Lochte seems to be hoping for something similar for himself at the Tokyo Games. Minutes after walking in the door, Lochte started telling me on the record about how excited he is to have kids. (It is a rare thing to enter the home of a major celebrity, turn on a tape recorder, and then hear them speak so openly about family planning.)
He's had his Doberman, Carter, for nine years, which, he said, has helped prepare him for raising human offspring. "I treat him like he’s my son," he said, "Talking to him, me and him sit on the couch, we go for walks."
Reid said that growing up, she imagined herself as a successful businesswoman instead of a mom. But now, she and Lochte are talking about how many children they want. "No less than two, no more than three," Lochte has decided. "I want boy, girl, boy, or boy, girl, girl," Reid said.
Lochte is determined to plan Reid's pregnancies so she and any kids they may have can travel to Tokyo. "I need my baby there. I need you there," he said to her.
5. Lochte forgot everything he wanted to say to Reid when he proposed, despite dress-rehearsing. "I planned this whole thing. So, she’s never been on a helicopter ride so I said, 'Oh, this company, this helicopter place reached out to me and wanted to take me on a helicopter ride because I’m new in L.A.' I was like, 'Do you want to come with me?'" Lochte recalled. ("We get those things all the time," Reid explained. "Like, 'Hey, if you do this, can you just give us a shout-out or take a picture?'") The helicopter landed at a scenic viewpoint in Malibu. The sun was setting, and a picnic with roses and Champagne sprawled before them. Then came the hard part: "I practiced this days and days in my bathroom: I put on my suit, I put the ring in the pocket," Lochte said, "I was just nailing this - like, This is what I’m going to say, I’m pulling it out perfectly. So when I was getting down on one knee, and I tried to get the ring out, and I couldn’t get it out of my pocket, I was like, 'Oh shit.' What the heck, I get it out. And then what I wanted to say didn’t come out, I was so nervous and flustered. I was like, 'I love you so much, will you marry me?'"
Reid was surprised by his brevity. "Ryan is so romantic and I thought, When he gets down on one knee, who knows what he’s going to say? He’s probably going to go on with a whole spiel like, 'I love you, you’re the love of my life, blah, blah, blah.' And he was just like, 'I love you, will you marry me?' And I was like, 'Oh my god, I’m so surprised.'"
6. They're open to their relationship becoming a Lifetime movie. "What normal married couples go through, we went through in a matter of months almost," said Lochte, forgetting that most people don't find themselves at the center of the world's biggest scandal at any moment ever in their lives. "The ups and downs of reaching all-time lows and all-time highs." Reid agreed that there's something there. "It definitely could be a movie."
Ryan Lochte and Kayla Rae Reid are part of Cosmopolitan.com’s list of 2016's most fascinating people on the internet in 2016. See the rest of the list:
2. Huda Kattan
3. Simone Biles
5. Joanne the Scammer: Branden Miller
9. #MrStealYourGrandma: Irvin Randle
10. Russian Leo: Roman Burtsev
11. Dicks Out For Harambe: Brandon Zaboklicki and Brandon Wardell
12. Chewbacca Mom: Candace Payne
13. The Damn Daniel Boys: Daniel Lara and Josh Holz
Related: How Ryan Lochte Went From Disgraced Olympian to Engaged Man
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