'I moved to L.A. with him,' she says of her ex. 'I had no brand, no money and I was in love.'
Olivia Culpo is opening up about a "very formative experience" for her: dating Nick Jonas. On the premiere episode of TLC's The Culpo Sisters, the 30-year-old former Miss Universe is pressed about dating Nick from 2013 to 2015.
"I moved to L.A. with him. I had no brand, no money and I was in love," she recalls. "That was great, right, but when he broke up with me, I was kind of left with no sense of identity."
Olivia says her "whole identity" was wrapped up in the 30-year-old Jonas Brothers member. "I thought we were going to get married, I thought all the things," she explains. "And I just remember night after night looking up at my ceiling in my apartment that I couldn't afford thinking to myself, how am I going to pay my rent?"
She adds, "I couldn't even afford my groceries. It was a serious, pivotal moment for me, but it was something that taught me that you can't give up."
Olivia didn't give up and now she's been dating San Francisco 49ers running back Christian McCaffrey since 2019, while Nick is married to former Miss World Priyanka Chopra.
In an exclusive interview with ET, Olivia opened up about her current relationship and why she decided to break her no-athletes rule for her boyfriend -- after dating Danny Amendola and Tim Tebow.
"He's just the best, I feel like he is really everything that I could ever ask for," she gushed. "So I never have to worry about anything. I think that was the reason why I didn't want to date an athlete, no offense, because there is a reputation there."
Olivia continued, "He just comes from a great family. We have a lot in common in that respect. I feel like you can really tell who a person is by the people that raise them, and I just love his parents so much. They have a great relationship."
As for her past romances, Olivia told ET, "Relationships are like putting a mirror up to yourself. You see things about yourself that you need to work on. It really requires you to turn inward in a weird way, and, of course, when they fail, it's on a whole other level. So I feel like I learned a lot about myself in every single hiccup in life and with every single person that involved. So you can only be grateful of those types of experiences."
New episodes of The Culpo Sisters premiere every Monday at 9 p.m. ET/PT and are also available to stream on Discovery+ that same day.
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