Exclusive
‘Love Island USA’: Dylan Dishes on His & Kenzie’s Future, Their First Date & More
What To Know
- Dylan Wrona and Kenzie Annis became fully exclusive after leaving Love Island USA.
- Dylan told Swooon about exploring their connection outside the villa.
- He also discussed Season 8 villa drama and what’s next for his relationship.
Dylan Wrona and Kenzie Annis may not have made it into the Love Island USA finale, but they didn’t leave empty-handed. In Dylan’s words, he got to “walk out with the most beautiful ball of sunshine ever,” whom he met when he came in as a Casa Amor bombshell. After being dumped just ahead of the finale, Dylan revealed that his connection with Kenzie has grown even stronger.
In an interview with Swooon, Dylan opened up about what their relationship — which is official and no longer just a villa connection — has been like in the real world, including their first date. In addition to sharing his plans for the future with Kenzie, Dylan first dished that he followed through on the promise he made during his Love Island USA Aftersun appearance: that he’d ask Kenzie to be exclusive with him in the outside world.
“We are fully exclusive,” Dylan said on July 14. “We made it official now that we’ve been in L.A., and I already have plans to go see her family in Georgia. I think today I’m leaving, so just still figuring out flight details and whatnot. We’re just planning on continuing to go on dates and just having fun together, and then hopefully sometime in the very near future I can put a label on it and make her my girlfriend.”
Dylan’s been on a high getting to know Kenzie outside of the villa. It started in their hotel in Fiji, when they were able to unwind and talk about their “wild” experience. They also got to explore another side to their relationship that they didn’t on camera. “She had mentioned on Aftersun just wanting to get very intimate with me off camera, so we definitely got down to business right away, and it was a lot of fun,” Dylan said. “And we have the personal connection, we have the emotional connection, and and now being able to explore the physical all together has been really great.”
Since they landed in L.A. post-filming, they’ve also been able to do more couple activities. “We’ve been going out on like dinner dates and and just doing stuff that allows us to get to know each other on a much more personal level,” he added. “Knowing that cameras aren’t in our face or [we’re not] not mic’d up, we can really just fully immerse ourselves in just us.”
Dylan recounted his and Kenzie’s first official date, which they didn’t even realize was their first date until after it had already happened. They got dinner at a place close to their hotel that Dylan had been to before. “I think it was just a late Sunday night, and nobody was out, but we ordered food, we had drinks, we were just talking, laughing, having a good time, and then before we know it, like two or three hours had passed,” Dylan said. “And as we’re getting up to walk out, Kenzie turned to me, and she goes, ‘That was kind of our first date, wasn’t it?'”
He continued, “I feel like we didn’t even really realize it because it just kind of happened naturally, and we just had such a good time together. But yeah, like we have a bunch of stuff that we want to plan that’s super fun. We want to do beach dates. We want to go skydiving. We want to travel together. So we got some stuff cooking up for sure.”
Kim Nunneley/Peacock
During their real-world time together, Dylan has also discovered that Kenzie isn’t any different than she was during filming. “There’s no switch up,” he explained. “There’s no, ‘Oh, I’m actually this way. I was just acting that way on camera.’ She’s just authentically herself, and that’s really what I fell for in the show. I really fell for her personality. I fell for her looks. I fell for her family life, her quick-witted personality, and all those things. So I’m just really happy with my experience with her so far.”
That being said, Kenzie and Dylan’s villa run wasn’t entirely without its drama. Dylan struggled to trust Kenzie when she had conversations with Dylan about having him meet her family and shortly after she kissed Gal Tshnieder. These days, Dylan pointed out that they’ve moved beyond that and the Movie Night drama completely, with Dylan “understanding where she was coming from and why she was moving the way that she was moving.”
The “defining moment” in them moving past the drama was Family Day, when Dylan got to meet Kenzie’s mom and brother. “They knew from Day 1 that she wanted to go for me, and that they really liked me as a person,” he said. “They thought I was authentic on TV, and then even better in person. And then also, it feels good to hear it from my mom. My mom is somebody that I look up to a lot in life, especially for relationship advice. And she gave me a lot of just great things to hear about Kenzie and how she thinks she’s an awesome person. That’s literally all I need to hear to be able to… just open up to Kenzie as much as possible, and I feel like from that day I was able to just like 100% gain all of her trust and go into the real world, and here we are.”
Ben Symons/Peacock
They’ve shown each other that they truly care for one another since then through physical touch and quality time. Self-described “lover boy” Dylan said, “A lot of our personality is just goofing around and doing dumb stuff that make each other laugh,” he said. “I feel like we really dove into that a lot in the hotel room, just being authentically ourselves and goofing off and just being weird. We’re both a little weird to a certain extent, so it just like it meshes so well, and like, we laugh for hours about the dumbest things.”
Dylan also saw how much Kenzie cared for him and how “super serious about the longevity of [their] relationship” she was when she pulled his mom for a one-on-one conversation during Family Day. “I really appreciated that because nobody has ever done that before, and it really just showed me that she’s gonna go the extra mile for me,” he said. “I feel like I showed her that throughout Casa, between setting up a massage date, making her breakfast the exact special way that she wanted it, and outside of the villa, having the conversations with her, talking about our future and longevity and like what we want to do as partners, and it’s just all meshed so well.”
Though he hasn’t watched the show in full yet, Dylan has no regrets about how he went about his Love Island USA experience, between “the super highs” and “the lows of [him] crying and getting emotional over a girl that [he] really cared about.” He also was “able to get emotional and super deep with friends and getting the advice of people in the villa that have been in the relationships longer and have gone through those feelings as well.”
He added, “You’re always going to go through ups and downs, your trials and tribulations, and ultimately, I felt like every time that we went through negative emotions, we ultimately grew closer and have moved forward in our relationship. I feel like I wouldn’t change a thing because ultimately I ended up with the girl that I wanted to be with going in there, and I couldn’t be happier.”
After all, it laid the foundation for their new relationship. “I think it goes without saying at this point, but like Kenzie and I really, really — well, I almost said a different word,” Dylan told Swooon. “We really, really like each other a lot, and we’re moving in that direction of really falling for each other, and every single night, we just talk about how we feel closer, and we just are moving in an amazing direction. And you know, I’m already there. She says she’s obsessed with me, so it’s just a great feeling, and I’m just excited to see what’s in store for us.”
