It was Kameran Crawford’s first day — April 30, 2022, to be exact — on the dating app Raya when she matched with Xavier Champagne.
“I only got on Raya because my 22-year-old assistant told me, ‘You’re never going to meet someone, try Raya,’” Crawford recalled.
When Crawford, who goes by Kamie, first saw Champagne on the app, she was wowed. “He was stunning,” she said. “I almost put a hole in my phone, I hearted so hard.”
Ironically, they lived only three blocks from each other but had never met.
Champagne was equally knocked out when he saw Crawford — and to this day, the two can’t agree on who hearted whom first. What Champagne knows for sure is that he wanted to get to know her better — and soon.
“I tried to take her out the same day,” he said. “We texted for like 20 minutes after matching and then talked on the phone right after that for an hour.” They made plans to meet the next day at the West 3rd location of the Italian restaurant Bacari in Los Angeles.
It was the best date she’d ever been on, she said.
“When I saw him, I knew. It’s an indescribable feeling. In addition to being gorgeous and 6-foot-4, he made me laugh,” Crawford said. “It felt like we spoke on every topic but had so much more to talk about.”
The interest was mutual, and Champagne was drawn to more than Crawford’s appearance.
“I was very interested in what’s beneath the looks. I was very intrigued by the person she is,” Champagne said. “In LA, people would rather go wide than go deep. I was exhausted by that.”
They discovered later that after their date, they were both “secretly texting our friends that we thought we had met ‘the one,’” she said.
After the first date, they went on two more the following week, the first at Terroni, an Italian restaurant in West Hollywood, Calif., and the second at Jones Hollywood.
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The two mutually decided to get off Raya in August 2022. Two months later, “Xavier called me while he was on a work trip and said, ‘I can see a future with us together, and I’d like to start that now if you’ll have me,’” Crawford said.
Champagne told Crawford he loved her three separate times before Crawford ever said it back. “I knew that when I said it, I would be saying it forever, so I really wanted to be sure,” Crawford said. “I’ve been telling him how much I love him every five minutes since.”
Crawford, 33, is a television and podcast host and producer. She is a former Miss Teen USA and Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, and has hosted several TV series including “Catfish: The TV Show,” “Are You the One?” and “Ex on the Beach.” She also produces and hosts a podcast about relationships. She earned a bachelor’s degree in communications and media studies from Fordham University. She was born in Cleveland and raised in Potomac, Md.
Champagne, 38, is the senior director of A&R at Warner Chappell Music, based in New York. He received an associate degree in digital filmmaking from the Art Institute of Philadelphia. He was born in Camden, N.J., and raised in Willingboro, N.J., and West Philadelphia. He has an 18-year-old daughter from a previous relationship.
On July 3, 2024, the couple moved in together in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, after Champagne was relocated to Warner Chappell’s New York office. They continued to split their time between New York and Los Angeles for the next 15 months.
In August 2025, they purchased an early 1900s Tudor-style house in northern New Jersey, which they are fully renovating. They plan to maintain their home in Los Angeles as well.
On Sept. 27, 2025, at Saga, a restaurant in Manhattan’s Financial District, Champagne proposed, feigning a work dinner with his boss and the company president. Champagne even gave his boss’s name to the maître d’ to keep Crawford off the scent.
But when she reached the top of the stairs, “I was hyperventilating from the steps and the situation,” she said.
After the proposal, the couple joined family and close friends, who were waiting there to surprise her, for dinner downstairs at Saga. They then celebrated at the Amber Room, a club and events space in the Flatiron district.
“It was perfect,” Crawford said. “If we could have, I would have married him that night.”
The two were wed at their home on Aug. 13 by Milon Crawford, one of Crawford’s five younger sisters, who was ordained online by American Marriage Ministries for the occasion. Another of Crawford’s sisters, Victoria, and Champagne’s daughter acted as witnesses.
A celebratory wedding followed on Aug. 15 at the Water Works in Philadelphia with 205 guests in attendance. The ceremony was led by Peter Killough, Supreme Court Justice of Maryland, who was a close childhood friend of Crawford’s father.
Their very first date was the day before Champagne’s late father’s birthday. “Although I never had the privilege of meeting him, we have always found comfort in that timing,” Crawford said. “It feels like a quiet reminder that he has been watching over our love story since the very beginning.”
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