Country superstar Zach Bryan and Barstool influencer Brianna Lapaglia broke up last week, according to a statement Bryan released on his social media. Their well-documented relationship went on for over a year and the breakup left fans and Lapaglia shocked. Especially after Bryan was spotted on Raya, a celebrity online dating site, immediately after the breakup.
Amidst the chaos, people have begun to analyze the musician’s past relationships and notice some patterns. How can the man who writes the perfect love song be this terrible at relationships?
Zach Bryan’s Past
Before we can get into him and Lapaglia, it is only right to explain his previous endeavors. He married Rose Madden in 2020, and they filed for divorce less than a year after the wedding. They met while serving in the U.S. Navy, and while neither party has confirmed it, the internet’s favorite rumor is that he cheated on her and mailed her the divorce papers.
It’s pretty brutal, especially considering that his album, “Elisabeth,” is rumored to be all about their relationship and named after her. He has since changed the album cover from a picture of them to a solid, black square.
Next up, Deb Peifer. They started dating in 2022 and shared their relationship publicly on social media. Zach shared on X in May 2023 that they had broken up mutually after a year together (notice the trend here?). They have both since deleted all evidence of their relationships off social media.
That same May, Lapaglia and Bryan met for the first time at the Country Music Awards while in different relationships. Bryan typically brings various guests up on stage during his most popular song “Revival.” A month after the awards show, Lapaglia and Josh Richards, another Barstool employee/influencer, were invited up.
I’m not implying Lapaglia had anything to do with his breakup with Peifer, but the timelines are definitely interesting. Bryan allegedly slid into Lapaglia’s DMs after she discussed him on her podcast, and the rest was history.
Bryan and Lapaglia’s Relationship
The pair was seemingly close immediately and Lapaglia confirmed the relationship during the summer of 2023 on her Barstool podcast. She began touring with him and lived together on the road in his tour bus.
Lapaglia, the influencer she is, shared videos of the two of them constantly and fans considered them a great match. They bought a house and a dog together, and fans even criticized Lapaglia for seemingly making Bryan her whole personality.
They attended the Grammys together, where he won his first respective award and made their red carpet debut. They gushed over each other in Instagram posts for their first anniversary and things seemed like they were going perfectly.
Rumors began to swirl in early October about a breakup, but Lapaglia shut them down, claiming that although they were going through “personal stuff,” they were still together.
On Oct. 22, Bryan released his statement on Instagram announcing the breakup. While it seemed like a normal announcement at first, Lapaglia later posted a video where she was visibly upset, and she claimed she had no idea he was going to take the information public just yet.
He knows better than anyone how the media and the fans take information and run with it, and you’d think he would have let her know he was going to leak their breakup to the world. Lapaglia claimed to be blindsided by the whole thing.
“It would be beneficial for both of us to go our separate ways”
Zach Bryan via Instagram
Post Breakup
Apparently, everyone can agree that Bryan handled it terribly, with many fans on TikTok claiming that although they aren’t the biggest fans of Lapaglia, she did not deserve this.
Dave Portnoy, the owner of Barstool and Lapaglia’s boss, has publicly come out to support her, even dedicating Taylor Swift’s song “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” to her.
Things only got worse for Bryan when people leaked that they saw him active once again on the online dating site Raya. Rumors continue to swirl about a video of him in a model’s bed before the breakup even occurred but as of right now, everything in the video is just speculation.
People have a lot of conflicting ideas about both Bryan and Lapaglia as people but it is clear that Bryan tends to have some self-destructive tendencies in his relationships. Hopefully, he will take this time to reflect instead of jumping into his next year-long relationship as is his pattern.