Olivia Attwood has hailed her new boyfriend Pete Wicks as a “rare person”, describing their relationship as “the easiest thing I’ve ever done”.
The reality TV stars shared a series of loved-up snaps from Ibiza to Instagram in July, making their relationship public after months of speculation.
In an interview with Cosmopolitan magazine, Attwood spoke about her new romance with the former The Only Way Is Essex (Towie) cast member.
The 35-year-old said: “It’s the easiest thing I’ve ever done. We’re both in this era where we just want peace and to enjoy life.
“Personality wise, I’ve never had a straight man who can go toe-to-toe with me on banter – he is the only one who can keep up.
“We tick a lot of the boxes that are really important in adult relationships.”
“Pete’s a very rare person. He’s very emotionally intelligent. It’s quite remarkable,” the former Love Island star added.
Wicks and Attwood co-host Kiss radio show The Sunday Roast, and have been the subject of relationship rumours since images surfaced of them together earlier this year.
The rumours were fuelled after Attwood revealed her split from ex-partner Bradley Dack, a professional footballer with whom she had a tumultuous on-off relationship for over a decade.
“Once he knew I was separated, he made his feelings known, and it all happened quite quickly,” Attwood said.
“Our friendship group is nauseated by us – we’re one PDA away from being exiled. I’m like, ‘who are we?’
“We’re bringing out a (new) side of each other.”
Attwood said the pair “always got on so well” through years of friendship, and “bickered like brother and sister”.
The TV personality also reflected on her relationship with Dack, with whom she tied the knot in 2023 in a lavish wedding, covered in ITV series Olivia Marries Her Match.
“We had a really good relationship,” she told the women’s magazine.
“When we found each other again, we healed each other in lots of ways. We made happy memories.”
Attwood revealed their split in a social media post in March, saying she had stood by Dack as he “lied and cheated on me multiple times” over the past decade.
She said: “When you love someone, you’re happy to live in the grey area. But that day, everything suddenly lined up.
“There was nowhere left for him to hide. As soon as I knew it had happened to me, I couldn’t stay.
“The only person I would be cheating is myself.”
Attwood continued: “What happened didn’t break my heart – I broke my own heart by leaving, because the easiest thing to do would’ve been to stay.
“Actually pulling the rug (from under our feet) and sticking to it is the hardest thing. It was f****** brutal.
“It’s very easy for people to sit on their high horse and go, ‘oh my God, you stayed with someone that cheated’, but it’s way more complex than that.”
She said she felt compelled to post about their split on social media as the speculation “wasn’t fair” and she felt she was being “villainised”.
“Why should I fall on the sword when ultimately the breakdown was nothing to do with me? I wanted the relationship to work,” she added.
Attwood rose to fame after her stint on ITV dating show Love Island in 2017.
She also appeared in Towie as a regular cast member from 2019 to 2021, and has featured in a string of ITV shows including The Price Of Perfection and Bad Boyfriends.
In 2023, she joined talk show Loose Women as a panellist.
