A Timeline of Zach Bryan & Brianna Chickenfry’s Relationship

LaPaglia met the country singer at the 2023 ACM Awards, where she asked him to take a photo. To this day, the PlanBri Uncut host says that the two “didn’t say anything to each other” beyond posing for the photo, as they were both in relationships.

She even vlogged her experience meeting him on her YouTube channel here, calling him “the nicest man I’ve ever met.”

LaPaglia and her cohost Richards attended Bryan’s concert at NYC’s Forest Hills Stadium, a few weeks after Bryan split from his ex-girlfriend, Deb Peifer. LaPaglia and Richards joined him onstage for “Revival,” but explained on BFFs that she and Bryan didn’t speak at all at the event, but he slid into her DMs shortly after.

“I was still with my boyfriend at the concert. And then, a few days later, me and Joey break up. And [Bryan] had already broken up with his girlfriend, and then he f—in’ slid into my DMs,” she recalled. “I made a podcast after we went onstage and was like, ‘Eat the rich besides Zach Bryan’ and he posted it and then he DM’d me and said, ‘That was so sweet, thank you guys for coming.’ And then we just started chatting.”

“I think I might have some stuff to address: I’ve been hanging out with a guy named Zach,” she told Grace O’Malley, her longtime friend and co-host. “We’re just hanging out, having fun, and that’s where I’ve been, that’s what I’ve been doing, that’s what I’m gonna be doing for a little bit. We’ll see where it goes, and I’m happy.” 

In a photo dump captioned, “Life lately,” LaPaglia included a photo of Bryan enjoying a soft-serve ice cream.

Shortly after releasing his self-titled album in August 2023, LaPaglia took to her TikTok to share a video of herself getting ready to his track, “Smaller Acts.” See it here.

LaPaglia walked the red carpet at the 2024 Golden Globes, and shared a carousel of photos featuring her outfit, a sparkling sweetheart neckline gown with a high slit. At the time, Bryan shared the post to her Instagram Stories, calling LaPaglia “beautiful.”

However, after the breakup, LaPaglia alleged that the duo got into an argument that night because he “didn’t like” her outfit. “He said he didn’t want to date someone that presents themselves that way. And he unfollowed me, he unfollowed everyone, and I… when I flew home — I flew home after the Golden Globes. He ruined my night,” she explained on the BFFs podcast. “He’s like happy in the beginning then all of a sudden, it turns to, ‘I can’t believe you’re wearing this … blah blah blah blah.’ “

She continued, “It ruins the night. I’m crying to Grace [O’Malley] the whole f—ing night, and he unfollows me because of the dress. He tells me all the Instagram pictures that I have that I have to delete, and I’m like, ‘Okay, yeah, I guess.’ He makes me believe that I have to change my image to to keep up with his or something.”

LaPaglia and Bryan walked the 2024 Grammys red carpet as a couple, with the singer wearing an all-black suit and tie ensemble, while the podcast host matched in a custom, lacy black dress from Undone by Kate.

Bryan was up for three awards that evening, and ended up winning his first-ever Grammy for best country duo/group performance for his Kacey Musgraves collaboration, “I Remember Everything.”

“Two nights ago, Zach and I got into a traumatizing side-by-side crash,” LaPaglia recalled in a video shared to TikTok. “It flipped a bunch of times, everything shattered and thank god we had our seatbelts on.”

She continued, “There was a lot of blood and we thought — we were saying goodbye to each other.” LaPaglia noted that when paramedics arrived to the scene, they treated Bryan by giving him stitches. “It was a huge gash, but we are OK. We are happy and alive,” she shared, noting that she suffered several bruises and scratches from the broken glass. Thankfully, despite the series of unfortunate events, Bryan was still able to continue his tour, performing on May 13 and 14 in Little Rock, Arkansas. 

The couple celebrated their anniversary with sweet posts on Instagram. “people are annoying with stuff like this and now I understand why. here’s to a year together. happy anniversary and I love you so much Brianna. the only person I know who handles bulls— elegantly. just about one of the only people that makes me laugh anymore and OFTEN. proud to call you my girl,” Bryan captioned his now-deleted post.

In her own now-deleted post, LaPaglia wrote, “A year full of loving harder than I thought I was capable of and laughing louder than any year before. There isn’t a damn thing I wouldn’t do for ya. My person forever. I love you my Zachary.”

“Brianna and me have broken up with each other and I respect and love her with every ounce of my heart,” Bryan wrote on his Instagram Stories, shortly after fans allegedly saw his profile on the dating app, Raya. “She has loved me unconditionally for a very long time and for that I’ll always thank her. I have had an incredibly hard year personally and struggled through some pretty severe things. I thought it would be beneficial for both of us to go our different ways. I am not perfect and I never will be.”

He requested, “Please respect Brianna’s privacy and space in this and if you have it in your heart, mine too. With everything I am and to anyone I let down, I am sorry. I try my best in everything. I failed people that love me and mostly myself.”

The Barstool Sports personality shared a nearly four-minute video to YouTube titled “Love you guys, be back soon,” in which she’s seen teary-eyed on her bathroom floor. “I just woke up to Zach posting on his Instagram that we broke up,” she tells the camera. “I had no idea that post was going up. He didn’t text me, he didn’t call me. I just woke up to a bunch of texts being like, ‘Are you OK?’ I’m like, ‘Did my f—ing dad die?’ I’m completely blindsided by that.”

LaPaglia shared that she wasn’t expecting such a public announcement just a day after their breakup. “I’m at the point where it’s like, how can you give someone everything and love them so unconditionally, like, through stuff that you shouldn’t because you just love them and you see the good in them? How can you give every ounce of yourself to someone and then be discarded of in a few days?” she shared. “It’s really heartbreaking and I don’t want to talk about details right now. I don’t want to talk about it yet. I will, obviously, but right now, I wanted to heal privately.”

She continued, “I wasn’t ready to do anything publicly and now I’m just getting a bajillion freakin’ texts and s—. I just wanted to handle this as a human first and now it’s not that. I’m just asking if you could please respect my privacy right now and when I’m ready to talk about everything that happened, I will.”

Bryan dropped two tracks, “The World’s a Giant” and “High Road,” taking to Instagram to thank “all the people who love me; who have truly carried the weight with me.”

In support of LaPaglia, her BFFs co-hosts Dave Portnoy and Josh Richards shared a diss track called “Smallest Man” — a reference to Taylor Swift’s song “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived” — which features the hook, “I said trust me, caught your pants on fire / Tinder, Bumble, Raya, knew you was a liar/ You’re a douchebag, you just made a new rival / Pretty soon you going to need a revival.”

However, the song was shortly taken down from all platforms, which Portnoy and Richard speculated was because of a copyright issue with the outro, which interpolates Bryan’s “28,” as they sing, “How lucky is Bri, to be free of ZB and his STDs.”

Portnoy also added that in 2020, Richards “signed a music deal” with Warner Music Group, which Bryan is also signed to, so the company “owns [Richard’s] a–.”

In a now-viral episode of the BFFs Podcast LaPaglia made a series of claims, including accusing Bryan of “emotional abuse” during their relationship and claiming she was offered $12 million and a New York apartment to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) about their relationship, which she said she refused. “The last year of my life has been like the hardest year of my life dealing with the abuse from this dude,” LaPaglia said. “I’m still scared right now because I’m scared of him. My brain’s rewired, and I’m scared to make him mad.”

“There was always another excuse as to why he was treating me so poorly and why I’m crying myself to sleep every night, why he’s screaming at me,” she said. “And then you wake up, it’s the apology, it’s the ‘I’m going to be better, I need you in my life.’”

Among her claims, LaPaglia described an alleged incident on her birthday, where Bryan reportedly yelled at her her friends after she had gone to bed. “I look outside and I have my aunt trying to control Zach — there’s a recording of all of this that can never be out — basically Zach stood up at the fire and he just starts screaming at my friends.”

“He stood up at the fire and just starts screaming at my friends, ‘You’re not going to be anything, you’re a f—ing loser.’ Just the most horrible s—,” she said. “It was just crazy, completely out of nowhere … When Zach gets in that zone, there’s no containing it.”

In another instance, LaPaglia claimed Bryan had smashed her phone, saying to her co-hosts, “Look at my phone, it’s smashed from him, he’s always smashed my phone,” adding that he would “whip it at a wall.”

Watch the full episode here. Following the episode’s release, Billboard reached out to Zach Bryan’s representatives for comment but did not receive a response.

Portnoy shared an additional diss track, without Richards and without copyrighted music. The track, called “Country Diddy,” singing, “Country Diddy, Country Diddy / Steal another story write another Country Ditty / All these NDAs you sound like a country Diddy.”

“Butter cup really thought that he could shut me up / Someone tell your cheap lawyers I don’t give a f—,” he sings elsewhere in the song.

Listen to it here.