If you catch yourself doom scrolling on TikTok like much of the world, you may have noticed one couple coming up on your FYP a lot lately. From sharing deets on their date nights, to jumping on the couple dance trends, to simply talking to the camera and explaining the story of how they met, NCAA athlete couple Lucas Byrd and Ellie Holzman have captured the attention of viewers worldwide. And while they might have caught viewers’ eyes due to their significant height difference (because yes, that gender stereotype is still heavily present in today’s dating culture), it’s their sweet bond that has really stolen fans’ hearts.
Holzman is a 6’2’’ former volleyball player who graduated from the University of Illinois in 2023, and Byrd is a 5’6” wrestler who is a current senior at the same school. On Saturday, March 22, he won the national title at the NCAA Championships, becoming the 21st Fighting Illini wrestler to win a national championship and earned the University of Illinois wrestling program’s 25th individual national title.
But that’s not what made Byrd’s win go viral over the weekend. It was that immediately after winning the fight, Byrd ran to his girlfriend and tightly hugged her, as the announcer repeated the words, “Love knows no boundaries,” seemingly in reference to the couple’s height difference. Fans went wild over their interaction. “This is the kind of masculinity women are looking for!” one TikTok commented on the video. Another wrote, “When you’re secure in your own skin, it’s a beautiful thing.”
This isn’t the first time Byrd and Holzman have gone viral for being a couple of cutie patooties, either — in fact, they’ve been a hot topic on the internet for a while now. On Sept. 7, 2022, the couple posted a storytime video explaining how they met and their journey going from friends to dating: The couple met at a bar in January 2020. As everyone knows, COVID hit soon after this, so when they were sent home during the outbreak, they spent a lot of time getting to know each other by FaceTiming and talking on the phone. They were friends for two years, and after a lot of time spent together, they decided their feelings for each other were worth pursuing, and have been together ever since.
In the beginning, Byrd and Holzman kept their relationship private as they were both still trying to figure out their relationship, but over time, they became more public, as seen through their date night and challenge videos on TikTok. As they started posting consistently in February 2022, and gained public attention, their videos began to show the world that their love for each other is strong — definitely stronger than the stereotypical expectation for the man to be taller than the woman in order for the relationship to work. However, Holzman admitted this norm affected her at first, as she alluded to in the storytime video, but she quickly realized that this pressure didn’t need to affect her feelings toward Byrd, and that it didn’t hold any real power over her and her happiness unless she let it.
In July 2022, Holzman filmed a TikTok responding to a comment asking how she got over the height difference in her relationship. “It did take a little while for me to get over it, maybe like a couple of months,” she said. “Lucas and I kept our relationship a little bit more private just because we didn’t want other people’s opinions affecting how we felt about each other, at least in the beginning while we were still trying to figure it out. For me personally, to get over it, I stopped putting value into the opinions of people who I don’t even know their first name.”
Byrd and Holzman’s transparency about their relationship and overwhelming amount of love for each other has redefined how many people view love. Their videos are consistently met with positive comments like “I’m actually obsessed with them” and “my favorite couple.”
TBH, they’re so sweet and uplifting that watching them turns my doom scrolling into — dare I say it — hope scrolling.