Gabriel Hawkinsand Nia Sioux Courtesy of Nia Sioux/Instagram

When Dance Moms alum Nia Sioux’s boyfriend sat her down for a serious conversation at the beginning of their relationship, the last thing she was expecting was to hear that he was a fan of the show. Yet, that’s exactly what Gabriel Hawkins, a student at UCLA at the time alongside Sioux, 23, had to get off his chest.

“It was so funny because we hadn’t made things official yet,” Sioux told Us Weekly exclusively on Tuesday, November 19. “He sat me down and he was like, ‘OK, I have to tell you something.’ And I was like, ‘What?’ That can go a million ways. And he was like, ‘I just need to let you know I know who you are. I grew up watching you.’”

She continued: “He said that he and his mom actually watched the show, and that was their guilty pleasure when he was growing up. And he said that my mom was his favorite on the show, and I was his favorite girl. And he had a crush on me growing up.”

Hawkins’ confession didn’t scare her away, though: the pair are both college alums now and are nearing their third anniversary. Sioux said that Hawkins, also 23, jokes that he gets to date his “celebrity crush,” which she finds “so cute.”

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“To be able to date someone who knew who I was and knows my upbringing and background and isn’t a weirdo, it’s really sweet,” Sioux shared. “I don’t really have to explain anything to him because he knows what I went through.”

Sioux appeared on Dance Moms — a Lifetime reality TV series that followed the tumultuous relationships between young dancers, their notoriously strict teacher Abby Lee Miller and their mothers — alongside her mom, Dr. Holly Hatcher-Frazier, from 2011 to 2017.

JoJo Siwa, Nia Sioux Frazier, Mackenzie Ziegler, Maddie Ziegler, Kalani Hilliker and Abby Lee Miller pose with their Favorite Reality Award for “Dance Moms” attend Nickelodeon’s 28th Annual Kids’ Choice Awards. Charley Gallay/KCA2015/Getty Images

What Sioux finds the most funny is that Hawkins was more nervous to meet her mom than he was to meet her.

“He was so nervous,” she recalled. “But now they’re besties. Seriously. He calls her all the time. She checks in on him. We all go to Disney all the time together and it’s really, really sweet.”

Following her time on Dance Moms, Sioux enrolled in college at UCLA to study American Literature and Culture — “It makes me well-rounded, and I’m a learner. I love taking classes. I love improving myself.… Knowledge is power,” she said of her decision to get her degree — which is where she met Hawkins.

“We actually met in a [Communications] class and he was a Comm major,” Sioux told Us. “We were friends at first, and then a little while after, we started dating, and he’s been my best friend ever since.”

While she said she “wasn’t looking for a relationship” in college, deciding to focus on herself instead, “it felt really natural and it felt right.”

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As for her relationship with dance, Sioux joined a dance team at UCLA that allowed her to embrace the art form for fun, which she called “healing.” While she’s grateful for her time on the show, she chose to opt out of the recent Dance Moms reunion in May 2024.

“It didn’t feel like the right thing for me at that time,” Sioux told Us of her decision. “I love the girls that I grew up with. My O.G. girls, they’re the best. And I think the world of them. So nothing against them or anything personally, it was a little too much for me to do. And it was something that I just didn’t feel like I needed to be there.”

She continued: “I’m really happy that the girls who went were able to have their closure and talk on their terms, and I hope that that was healing for them.”