Zach Bryan and Brianna Chickenfry, the stage name of Brianna LaPaglia, made their debut as a couple in July 2023. The country star and podcaster’s relationship made headlines because they were seemingly from different worlds, or at least entertainment sectors — but appeared ever the happy couple during red carpet appearances and on social media.
During an interview with People in August 2023, LaPaglia said that she had been getting “hate” for dating the country star.
“It’s fun. I’m like eating it up,” the influencer said with a laugh. “It was kind of crazy at first, but now, I realize you can’t buy into love — or hate — on the internet. You just kinda got to be yourself and see where it takes ya.”
When the couple broke up in October 2024, LaPaglia shared a different side of their relationship, saying she had experienced emotional abuse. TODAY.com has reached out to Bryan for comment about each of LaPaglia’s allegations and has also reached out to LaPaglia for comment.
Who are Zach Bryan and Brianna Chickenfry?
Zach Bryan, 28, is Grammy-winning country artist who rose to widespread popularity in 2022 with his album “American Heartbreak.”
Bryan is known for self-deprecating lyrics, like when he refers to himself as a “damaged boy” in “Darling.” Other lyrics praise women who see his positive side. In “Sun in Me,” he sings, “The only bad you’ve ever done was to see the good in me.”
Brianna Chickenfry, 25, is the stage name of podcaster Brianna LaPaglia. LaPaglia co-hosts two podcasts on Barstool Sports: “PlanBri Uncut,” alongside her friend Grace O’Malley, and the “BFFs Podcast,” alongside Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy and Josh Richards. Portnoy stepped away from the “BFFs Podcast” in November.
How did they announce their breakup?
On Oct. 20, 2024, Bryan posted an Instagram story saying he and LaPaglia had broken up.
“Addressing something: Brianna and me have broken up with each other and I respect and love her with every ounce of my heart. She has loved me unconditionally for a very long time and for that I’ll always thank her,” he wrote.
“I have had an incredibly hard year personally and struggled through some pretty severe things,” he continued. “I thought it would be beneficial for both of us to go our different ways. I am not perfect and never will be. 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,” he ended the message with. “I try my best in everything. I failed people that love me and mostly myself.”
Later that same day, LaPaglia posted her own Instagram story, detailing how “blindsided” she felt by this announcement.
She then posted a short video on YouTube entitled “Love you guys, I’ll be back soon.”
“I just woke up to Zach posting on his Instagram that we broke up and I had no idea that post was going up, he didn’t text me, he didn’t call me,” she said in the video. “I just woke up to a bunch of texts being like ‘Are you OK?’ And I’m like, ‘Did my f—ing dad die?’ And yeah, so I’m like completely blindsided by that.”
LaPaglia added that she’s been “crying for like five days straight,” implying the breakup occurred the week before Bryan took to Instagram to announce their split.
She said in the video she didn’t want to speak on details because she wanted to “heal privately,” but promised she would eventually.
She gave context to the lead-up to the breakup in the Nov. 7 episode of the “BFFs Podcast.” LaPaglia said Bryan broke up with her over text while she was on tour.
“I’m doing so well, I’m so happy, I’m finally feeling like myself again and I just get the (text) ‘I can’t do this anymore, I need you’ and it was like, ‘What? Where is this coming from? Why are you breaking up with me while I’m across the country on my tour?’” she said.
When her tour was finished, LaPaglia flew back to her home with Bryan. “I come home and it’s like, ‘Pack your bags,’” she said. They broke up then got back together, LaPaglia said. The morning after a show she had in Boston, Bryan said he was going back home to Oklahoma, where he’s from.
She said that was the last time she saw him. Eventually, LaPaglia said they had an official breakup conversation over text.
What has LaPaglia said about the relationship?
LaPaglia has unpacked her experience of their relationship on the “BFFs Podcast” and on her TikTok page.
According to Nov. 7 “BFF’s Podcast” episode, LaPaglia said they met at his concert, but both were seeing other people at the time.
When LaPaglia was newly single, Bryan asked her if she wanted to go on a road trip with him and she agreed. She said Bryan began “love bombing” her. Days after the trip began, Bryan got her name tattooed on his arm.
“I truly thought he was this great dude because in the first four months of our relationship he was, that’s who he showed me. That’s who I fell in love with. I fell in love with this person who doesn’t exist. This person that he showed me who he was,” she said.
But she said there was a “switch” four months in. She alleged the relationship was emotionally abusive, calling it a “crazy, awful cycle.”
“I went through literal narcissistic, emotional abuse for a year,” she said on her podcast. “And he made me believe everything was my fault. He isolated me from my whole entire life, he wouldn’t let me be who I wanted to be, he made me hate everything that I loved about myself. He broke me down and then made me feel like he was all I had left, and he just kept repeatedly beating me down and beating me down.”
On the same podcast episode, she gave specific incidents of their fights. For example, LaPaglia said Bryan took issue with a dress she wore to the Golden Globes this past January.
“He said he didn’t want to date someone who presents themselves that way,” she said. “He makes me believe that I have to change my image to keep up with his, or something, so I was twisted in the head — OK, yeah, he doesn’t want to be with a girl that, I don’t know, has cleavage,’” she said.
LaPaglia said on the podcast this was the moment she “lost herself.”
According to LaPaglia, another fight happened after she was singing country artist Morgan Wallen’s song “Last Night.” Bryan allegedly said he couldn’t believe LaPaglia was “singing another man’s song under my roof, in this house that I own.” She said the fight lasted a week. LaPaglia also said that she was not allowed to listen to Noah Kahan, an artist Bryan has collaborated with previously, because she “listened to him too much.”
In a Nov. 11 TikTok video, LaPaglia said the relationship caused her to lose 15 pounds because she was “physically sick from what I was going through mentally.”
Post breakup, LaPaglia said she doesn’t want to be “defined” by their relationship. “I’ll be damned if I let my career be defined by what he did to me,” she said on TikTok on Nov. 20.
What does an NDA have to do with this?
Also on Nov. 7 episode of the podcast, she said that Bryan wanted her to sign an NDA after their breakup and offered her $12 million and a New York apartment in exchange for her silence.
She said she considered the offer “for a second,” but said no because she doesn’t “think you can pay people off that you hurt for them to protect you.”
She said Bryan made “the women before (her)” believe “they had no other choice than to take money from you, sign their experiences away, sign what they went through away.”
LaPaglia said she didn’t take the money so that she could speak out for other victims of emotional abuse.
“It’s not just for me, it’s for anyone else that’s been emotionally abused, it’s for people right now that are being emotionally abused, it’s for people that don’t have a support system that I was luckily enough to have going through this. And the last year of my life has been the hardest year of my life, like dealing with the abuse from this dude,” she said.
LaPaglia said she wants to be a voice for survivors in a Nov. 20 TikTok video. “I want to show people that it’s OK to continue on with your life, and when it’s hard to, that you have to — or you won’t,” she continued.
She said she’s gotten “tens of thousands” of DMs a day from men and women who have “gotten the courage” to leave their relationships or “finally felt validated.”
