2 min readThis second-chance romance is for the books. Over a decade after Ariana Grande embarked on a whirlwind year-long relationship with her backup dancer Ricky Álvarez, the two have found their way back to each other. And after teasing the rekindled romance with a few changed song lyrics in “Thank U, Next,” the singer has declared things Instagram official.
Taking an old-school approach to the “hard launch”—or should we say “soft launch”— Grande sprinkled a few selfies of them together into an Instagram photo dump. The images are inconspicuous, as the pair’s heads are cropped off in one and there is a blurred effect on another. But just in case anyone was confused, she did drop in a tag, @rickyrozay, and he reposted a photo on his Instagram Story.
Grande and Álvarez first dated in 2015, after meeting during the artist’s Honeymoon Tour. While they broke up by 2016, they remained friendly, with the dancer even congratulating his ex-girlfriend publicly on her 2018 single “Thank U, Next”—in which he got a name drop. (“Wrote some songs about Ricky / Now I listen and laugh.”)
Grande later discussed the lyric in question during a sit-down interview on The Zach Sang Show, revealing her ex-boyfriend’s initial response to the line. “Ricky loved it. He was proud,” she recalled. “But Ricky was like, ‘Why did I get the worst line?… Everyone else’s line is so nice, and mine is like, man, f*ck him, he’s trash.’”
“I was like, ‘I could have said that.’ I could’ve said, ‘Wrote some songs about Ricky, never mind he’s trash,’” she teased. “But I didn’t. I said, ‘Now I listen and laugh.’”
Well, fast forward and that lyric got a rewrite after all. This past June, after the two were seen out to dinner together, Grande teased her reconciliation with Álvarez on stage. During the Austin, Texas, stop on her Eternal Sunshine Tour, she sang, “Wrote some songs about Ricky / And they still kinda slap.” Later, she switched the second line once more, declaring, “Wrote some songs about Ricky / We always find our way back.” Looks like it!