Laura June Nolan cheered when Matthew Denis Russell MacNabb finally ended a two-week relationship in record time — 4.1 seconds.
“She was playing him,” said Nolan, who was rooting for MacNabb, her fellow Irishman, on “Love Island UK,” season seven, which she watched nightly with her neighbor during the summer of 2021.
“He was really nice and down to earth,” Nolan, now 32, said. “He was witty. He was brilliant.”
MacNabb, 31, a strategic marketing consultant in Dublin, who received a law degree and M.B.A. from Ulster University in Northern Ireland, entered Casa Amor in Mallorca, Spain, on Day 29 of the show’s taping, and exited Day 45. He quickly became a fan favorite.
“Oh, he is lovely, isn’t he?” she recalled thinking after MacNabb returned to Ireland and posted a photo of himself hiking in the mountains with his then-6-year-old niece on Instagram. “Everyone was saying it. It wasn’t only myself, it wasn’t only my friend. It was the whole country.”
In November 2021, Nolan, a professional dancer then in her second season of “Dancing With the Stars Ireland” (“D.W.T.S.”), said she was “absolutely delighted” when MacNabb joined the show as her partner, but reined in her feelings.
“I have to do my job,” said Nolan, a world champion ballroom dancer.
Nolan, a former ballroom and Latin dancer, had trained with world champion coaches, competed in ballroom dancing from ages 3 to 25, and passed ballet examinations with London’s Royal Ballet. She was the 2025 D.W.T.S.-Ireland champion.
She, like MacNabb, is also a lifestyle influencer on Instagram and teaches children and adult dance classes at Laura Nolan Academy in Dublin.
The dance partners first met at a one-on-one meet and greet at the Gibson Hotel in Dublin. “Wow, she’s gorgeous,” MacNabb recalled thinking.
She said she gave him a quick hug (“dancers are very huggy people”), but kept romance at arm’s length.
His head spun as she rattled off possible dances they could do, including the Viennese waltz, fox trot, quick step, samba, cha-cha, rumba, paso doble, tango, jive, salsa, American smooth, contemporary ballroom and Charleston.
“I’ve never danced before,” he recalled thinking at the time. “I’ll figure that out later.”
One thing he did know: “I was infatuated.”
About 45 minutes later, after the producer told them to wrap it up, they continued their conversation at a hotel bar nearby — he had Jameson Irish whiskey and a burger, she Sauvignon Blanc and fries.
When they left the bar, around 10 p.m., he nearly missed his train back to his parents’ house two hours west in Downpatrick, where he grew up and was staying at the time. She was also living with her parents in Lucan, where she had grown up, just west of Dublin.
“I was really excited day in and day out,” said MacNabb, who, once rehearsals began, stayed in an apartment in east Dublin, walking distance from the studio.
Nolan kept her focus on the season ahead, which began airing in January 2022.
“I really wanted to do a good show,” she said, “and someone I could do lifts with.”
MacNabb, who is 6-foot-6, certainly had potential.
“I wasn’t a natural dancer, but I was very good at lifts,” he said.
They rehearsed eight hours a day — waltz week one, jive week two.
Four or five weeks before the show went live, he couldn’t resist. As they rehearsed the Viennese waltz, he pulled her in for a kiss, with hands on either side of her face.
“Was it something romantic or a dance move?” she wondered. “I pulled away,” she said. “We had a long way to go.”
They enjoyed being around each other, and after exhausting rehearsals, they sometimes explored Dublin and had a bite to eat.
“Things were progressing between us,” she said. “I was holding back. It got to the point that I actually really liked him.”
In February, after performing a fox trot during D.W.T.S.’s movie week, as “Toy Story” characters — she as Bo Peep with pigtails and bows and he as Woody with rosy cheeks — their families gathered at Kenny’s of Lucan, a pub near her parents’ house, for pizza.
She decided to be a bit more open.
“She saw my rosy cheeks and fell for me,” he said with a laugh.
A breakthrough came during dedication week, as they performed a contemporary ballroom dance to “See You Again,” by Wiz Khalifa, featuring Charlie Puth, from the film “Fast & Furious.” Their dance was dedicated to MacNabb’s friend Ryan Freeman, who died at 27 the previous summer.
“We did arabesques, epic lifts, pivots, tango, floor choreography, rolling and sliding and overhead lifts where he held me flat out,” she said.
Both looked ethereal in white.
“It was a profound moment,” he said, emotionally connected to a dance as never before. “It touched a lot of people,” and won the judge’s hearts, and top scores granting them immunity from elimination the next week.
Behind the scenes, “we were kind of in a relationship before our relationship,” he said, “sort of little dates. I’d make her breakfast granola bowls in the morning.”
“We did a pancake crawl,” he said, week seven, in February 2022, on Pancake Tuesday, an Irish tradition, including lemon and sugar Nutella and cream crepe-like pancakes.
They were together for 17 weeks, day in and day out. Viewers saw the chemistry, and so did the Irish press.
“Everyone was speculating,” she said. “Everyone knew but they didn’t.”
In March 2022, during what would be their last performance, on week 11, as they finished the samba in a live dance off in the semifinals, they could hide it no longer.
“He threw me across the floor,” she said, “then he slid across, grabbed my neck and kissed me on the show.”
The Irish press announced: Matthew MacNabb has a girlfriend.
In April, they posted their first video on Instagram as an official couple from the cliffs in La Jolla, Calif., when they visited San Diego, where he had lived in 2019, and visited friends. They also drove to his sister’s wedding in Naples, Fla., and stayed at his parents’ vacation home there.
After that, they rented an apartment in Marbella, Spain, where they worked remotely as influencers. In September, they returned to Dublin when she starred as Marilyn Monroe in “The Blonde Bombshell,” a dance/theater production, and they split their time living with her family and his as they saved up for a house.
She also returned to D.W.T.S. Ireland for subsequent seasons.
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“He understands the process better than anyone else,” she said, and from July 2024 to August 2025, they rented a place in the West Hollywood section of Los Angeles, where they continued to work as influencers, and she taught dance in Sherman Oaks, Calif.
“We’re so perfectly matched,” he said. “She’s my best friend.”
In July 2024, he had ordered a custom engagement ring in Dublin, which his parents brought over on their visit that fall.
In November 2024, he got on one knee, at Glider Point, where they had first announced their relationship, in La Jolla, overlooking the Pacific Ocean and golden cliffs at sunset.
“It was the easiest ‘yes,’” said Nolan, who will be taking her husband’s name.
On May 30, the sun came out after 10 minutes of rain, as Father Ray Kelly, a Roman Catholic priest known as Ireland’s singing priest, officiated at the Cathedral of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Carlow, Ireland, before 172 guests.
Nolan, who tucked a piece of lace from her mother’s wedding gown made into a flower into her bouquet, wore an off-the-shoulder tulle princess-like sparkling Milla Nova ball gown with floral appliqués. (Nolan’s mother, Aileen Nolan, was also a dancer.)
A reception followed at the 12th-century Kilkea Castle in Castledermot, County Kildare, Ireland, with rose, hydrangea and eucalyptus floral arrangements on tables named after dances on D.W.T.S. performed by the couple. They sat at the “glitterball” table.
“I’m massive into Arsenals,” MacNabb said of the English soccer team, who wore a bespoke David O’Connor double-breasted pearl gray suit. But that day during speeches at the reception, he skipped the team’s Champions League final against Paris Saint-Germain. “You know I love Laura to give up the Arsenals.”
As for dancing these days: “We dance in the kitchen a lot,” he said. “Laura is like a Ferrari; I’m like a smart Toyota Corolla.”
On This Day
Date May 30, 2026
Where Kilkea Castle, Castledermot, County Kildare, Ireland
Neighbor to Bridesmaid The friend Nolan had watched “Love Island” with each night in 2021, Isabel O’Brien, was one of four bridesmaids.
Dazzling Lineup At the church, Father Kelly sang his wedding version of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” which has 94 million views on Instagram. Niamh Kavanagh, the 1993 Eurovision winner, sang “In Your Eyes.” Both Kavanagh and Father Kelly had been D.W.T.S. contestants. Later, Deric Hartigan, a popular Irish presenter, was their M.C. and several D.W.T.S. dancers merged with guests on the dance floor.
Lifts, and a Couple of Dips Nolan choreographed their first dance as a fox trot, American Smooth dance with swing movements to Dean Martin’s “Heaven Can Wait,” with one more movement — re-enacting the kiss from the D.W.T.S. Viennese Waltz rehearsal. “Hand and hand on my face and he kissed me,” she said. This time she didn’t pull away.
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