The timeline of their relationship

For the right reasons! Sarah Hyland and Wells Adams are proof that Instagram can be the beginning of a beautiful love story.

Us Weekly exclusively revealed that Modern family star and Bachelor in Paradise the bartender began dating in October 2017. A few months later, Hyland shared that the two met through social media.

“Did you see those ‘Slide Into the DM’ memes? That. He got into my DMs,” the actress explained Jimmy Kimmel Live! in January 2018. “I thought he was funny, and he was a fan [my] show. I saw him bartending and I was like, ‘That’s really cute!’”

Hyland called Adams’ decision to send her a private message the perfect balance of “sexy” but not “aggressive.”

“Obviously I was alone and I said, ‘This is really cool. You are very advanced,” she said then. “But very confident and sexy, and I liked that.”

The two took the next step in their relationship in the summer of 2018 when they decided to move in together in Los Angeles.

Hyland later credited Adams with helping her cope with renal dysplasia, a debilitating disease that once caused her to contemplate suicide.

“He’s seen me at my worst,” she told Self magazine in December 2018. “I think that’s why I feel the most beautiful in his eyes, because he still thinks I’m beautiful after seeing it all. It was a really intimate beginning of a relationship to have to go through those hurdles at the very, very, very beginning when you’re just getting to know a person.”

Adams, in turn, called his girlfriend the “real life version” of Wonder Woman that same month.

“Imagine having a vital organ replaced. Imagine having 16 surgeries, visiting hundreds of doctors and taking thousands of pills. Think crazy weight loss due to dialysis, medication side effects and stress. Then imagine having to do it all over again. This time you’ve been keeping quiet while you’ve been recovering, all the while trolls on the internet have been judging you for your looks,” the podcast host said Us Weekly exclusively about Hyland’s health journey at the time. “Oh, and throw in filming the funniest show on TV and executive producing and acting in a movie… and you never break even. Never lose it. I know Gal Gadot is Wonder Woman on film, but Sarah is the real-life version.”

Adams and Hyland got engaged in July 2019. “That can’t eat, can’t sleep, reach for the stars, over the fence kind of world series,” the comedic actress captioned a photo of the beach proposal, citing the 1995 film It takes two.

After postponing their wedding amid the coronavirus pandemic, Hyland and Adams finally tied the knot in August 2022.

Scroll through to revisit their love story: