Disney Channel Stars Who Dated: Look Back at 15 Real-Life Couples
As the Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special approaches, we’ve found ourselves reminiscing over the good ole days — aka the Golden Age of the Disney Channel. We’re talking the early to late 2000s era, maybe all the way to the late 2010s if we’re feeling generous. Back in the day, Swooon‘s resident Gen Zers were so locked in on any and all things Disney, we likely could’ve earned a degree in it. And we don’t just mean the shows themselves, like The Suite Life of Zack & Cody and Wizards of Waverly Place — we followed the Disney Channel stars‘ every move.
Lucky for our drama-loving tween selves, the Disney Channel actors back then were constantly dating each other. The Jonas Brothers alone gave us a ton of fodder. Between Joe and Nick, they dated three members of Disney Channel royalty: Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, and Demi Lovato. (We’ll tell you who dated whom below.) Some connected on set, while others crossed paths as fellow members of the Disney Channel circle. So, we’re looking back at all the stars who dated, from Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens to Dove Cameron and Ryan McCartan. Let us know which ones surprised you at the bottom of the page!
Zac Efron & Vanessa Hudgens
Who could ever forget Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens‘s High School Musical romance? Life imitated art almost as soon as filming began in 2005. “We created a bond right from the start,” Hudgens told People years later. “We were like, ‘We’re doing this, it’s us or nothing.’”
In 2010, Troy and Gabriella shippers everywhere shed a tear when Efron and Hudgens split. There were no hard feelings, the couple revealed, and Hudgens would go on to admit that long distance was tough and being in the spotlight wasn’t easy.
Kimberly J. Brown & Daniel Kountz
Kimberly J. Brown and Daniel Kountz, aka Marnie and Kal, met on the set of Halloween II: Kalabar’s Revenge. Their love story didn’t start right away, though. They reconnected 15 years after filming the Disney Channel sequel and began dating. They married in 2024 and recently starred in the Hallmark movie, Haul Out the Halloween.
Miley Cyrus & Nick Jonas
There are very few photos of Miley and Nick out there, so we had to use a group pic. But lack of photographic relationship evidence side, the Hannah Montana and Camp Rock alums famously dated from 2006 to 2007. Miley and Nick, who met as 13-year-olds at a charity event, have let bygones be bygones over a decade later. At the time, though, Miley told Seventeen that she “bawled for a month straight” after the breakup.
“Nick and I loved each other,” she said. “We still do, but we were in love with each other. For two years, he was basically my 24/7. But it was really hard to keep it from people. We were arguing a lot, and it really wasn’t fun.”
During a 2025 episode of the Every Single Album podcast, Miley revealed that part of the reason they broke up is that Nick chose to tour with his brothers. “He was, like, separating himself from the Disney thing, and I wanted him to take me on the tour,” she said. “Like, ‘Why don’t we do it together? I don’t understand why you’re leaving me.’”
Sabrina Carpenter & Bradley Steven Perry
Girl Meets World meets Good Luck Charlie. Sabrina Carpenter and Bradley Steven Perry dated in 2014, when Girl Meets World was filming next door to Perry’s Disney XD show, Mighty Med. Carpenter told J-14 how their romance started. “[It was a] really unique way to ask someone out. [It was] like the pirate movies, like, they do the little bottles and they put notes in them and send them across the ocean, like one of those, and [he] put a note inside. It was cute,” she said.
They broke up in 2015. “Sabrina was my first girlfriend,” Perry reflected during an appearance on the Unplanned Podcast in 2024. “We dated for about two years… It was very much like a little high school relationship.”
Dove Cameron & Ryan McCartan
Liv and Maddie was a bit past our time, but we’d be remiss not to include stars Dove Cameron and Ryan McCartan, who met on the show. They got all the way to engagement before calling it quits. McCartan played the love interest — basketball captain Diggie Smalls — of Cameron’s Maddie. They dated for three years before getting engaged in 2016. Cameron initiated the breakup a few months later.
“It was my first ever real relationship, and it was on-screen and off-screen,” Cameron later reflected to Seventeen. “A lot of what I went through in that first relationship, the very low-lows, I did not make public.”
She added, “I was under the impression that I had to make everything look perfect all the time and my partner definitely put that in my ear. People thought I was sharing loads, but I hardly shared anything.”
Dove Cameron & Thomas Doherty
Cameron had another Disney Channel romance with her Descendants 2 costar Thomas Doherty. They also met on set in 2016 and got matching tattoos two weeks later. He also said “I love you” a week in. “My relationship with Thomas has been different than anything I’ve ever experienced with another human right from the very start,” she told Seventeen. “I know this is cheesy, but honestly, right from the moment we met, it felt like the earth moved, for both of us.”
They announced their split in 2020, with Cameron sharing on Instagram Stories that it was amicable. She later told Teen Vogue that she knew the relationship was “going to end.” She said, “I had the conscious thought, ‘This is going to last for years, and it’s going to devastate me and it’s going to completely tear down everything I thought I knew about myself and I don’t know if I’m going to survive it but I have a choice in this moment. I either dive in and I let this take me by the wrist and drag you behind this huge bus for four years, or I walk away right now.’ I remember thinking, ‘I don’t think that’s much of a choice,’ and I knew I had to dive in.”
Olivia Rodrigo & Ethan Wacker
Olivia Rodrigo has had some famous romances, and her first seems to have been with her Bizaardvark costar Ethan Wacker. After the show premiered in 2016, they told the public that they started dating in 2019, according to Elle, via a now-deleted Instagram post. In it, they revealed that their relationship had started six months earlier. They’re thought to have split that same year, though it wasn’t announced publicly.
Alyson Stoner & Cole Sprouse
Remember when Alyson Stoner guest-starred as Max in The Suite Life of Zack and Cody? Back when they were kids, Stoner and Cole Sprouse dated. Stoner went on The Night Time Show podcast in 2016, during which she revealed that Sprouse was her first crush. “He dumped me on my birthday,” the actress said. “What the hell, Cole?”
“He and Victoria Justice [who also guest-starred on Suite Life] had had a thing before me, so I was always super jealous,” she explained. “Not jealous. Insecure, more so. Like, she’s a babe. What am I going to do? What do I have to offer? I play sports. I don’t know. We were maybe 11.”
Joe Jonas & Demi Lovato
Camp Rock‘s Joe Jonas and Lovato let the light shine on their off-screen relationship in 2010, when they filmed the sequel to their hit DCOM two years after the first one came out. They broke up within the year.
“Demi and I knew going into our romantic relationship that it may not be an easy one,” Jonas said to Us Weekly. “I realize over the time we have shared together that I feel I care more about our friendship right now. It was my choice to break up, but I love her as a friend. She’s been there for me when I needed her. I will continue to be her friend and be there for her.”
Bridgit Mendler & Shane Harper
Another pair of Disney actors playing love interests became a real-life item: Good Luck Charlie’s Bridgit Mendler and Shane Harper. Two years after they met as 16-year-olds, the actors started dating. “Two years later we were just in the same friend group for awhile and he wore me down,” Mendler said, via Seventeen. “Persistence. I think chivalry should never die. I think a guy should fight for a girl and wait for a girl.” In late 2015, after four years of dating Harper, the actress revealed that she was single.
Notably, Harper went on to marry Samantha Boscarino, who played Harper’s other girlfriend — whom he cheated on Mendler’s character with — on Good Luck Charlie. It’s unclear when they got together, but their nuptials were confirmed in 2025.
Joe Jonas & AJ Michalka
In 2006, Joe became AJ Michalka‘s first boyfriend. They met on the Jonas Brothers’ Living Room Tour, during which she and sister Aly performed as the opening act. Years later, on the Podcrushed podcast, the “Potential Breakup Song” singer said that Joe ended things with her via phone call. “I feel like it was a very sweet, amicable [breakup],” she said. “I know that sounds crazy at that age. But it was sweet and I think it was mutual.”
Nick Jonas & Selena Gomez
Selena Gomez dated Nick from 2008 to 2010. They didn’t speak much about their relationship at the time, though that’s changed years later. During a 2025 appearance on the Therapuss with Jake Shane podcast, Gomez mentioned that she and Taylor Swift, who dated Joe, “bonded” over their breakups with the brothers.
“Everything was… cute, we were young. We all know and love each other now and it’s so cute,” Gomez said. “We don’t know what we were doing. [Swift] and I like to say the best thing we got out of those relationships was each other because it was really sweet.”
Miley Cyrus & Lucas Till
Maybe this one doesn’t count since Hannah Montana: The Movie released in theaters, but oh well. Lucas Till played Miley’s love interest when she traveled home to Nashville, though he never appeared on the Disney Channel show. It turns out that Cyrus and Till dated in real-life while the movie filmed for two months, which the latter confirmed during the promo tour.
Bella Thorne & Gregg Sulkin
Shake It Up’s Bella Thorne and Wizards of Waverly Place‘s Gregg Sulkin didn’t meet on set, but they’d known each other for years by the time they started dating in 2015, according to People. They appeared on a number of red carpets together before splitting a little over a year later.
“After much thought and soul-searching, we have made the difficult decision to end our relationship,” they told People in a statement. “We will always love each other and have a deep respect for one another, as we have each grown to be better people because of our time together. Our schedules made seeing each other difficult, and we decided that for now this would be best.”
Olivia Holt & Luke Benward
That’s right: the Girl vs. Monster leads dated! Olivia Holt and Luke Benward met on set in 2012, and their romance began that year. They kept the details mostly under wraps, but they broke up in 2014, per E! News.
