There were rumours that Bella Hadid would make her long-awaited runway comeback at the couture shows in Paris earlier this year. However fashion editors, influencers and fans alike were disappointed to see that instead Hadid spent January participating in a cutting competition (a Western-style equestrian contest).
“Never stop trying new things. I feel lucky enough to have the opportunity to keep learning in life,” the model captioned an Instagram photo dump of herself riding her horse Tito in the Limited Amateur category. Beady-eyed followers were also quick to notice in the carousel was a blurry picture of the model holding hands with an undisclosed male figure.
A month later the model confirmed whose hand that belonged to: Texan cowboy Adan Banuelos-Ray. In an Instagram story shared on Valentine’s Day (no less) Hadid posted a photo of the two lovingly gazing into each other’s eyes.
Then two days later the model shared a further photo, this time of the two celebrating her birthday in coordinating cowboy outfits. Of course, many had been speculating the two were an item ever since TMZ obtained photos of them holding hands and kissing last October. But this was Hadid making it Instagram official, which as any digital native knows, means they’re not just dating — they’re the real deal.
It all sounds like the plot of a cheesy Hallmark film or blockbuster rom-com. The big time, jet setting model turning her back on multi-million dollar campaigns and fashion history making moments (a la Coperni’s spray-painted dress) for a quiet life on the ranch with her cowboy boyfriend. Obviously the internet is obsessed.
But who is this man and how did the two even cross paths? Especially when one operates solely in stables in Texas and the other on catwalks in Milan, London, Paris and New York…
Bella’s dreams of being an Olympic equestrian dashed by a fateful diagnosis
The pivot from supermodel to cowgirl isn’t exactly surprising. Hadid has been open that her first love was horse riding. Having lived on a ranch for the first ten years of her life, she began riding at just three years old, Hadid originally had plans to join the Olympic equestrian team in 2017.
“My devotion stemmed from my mom’s love of horses. I have been riding since I could walk and the fact that my mom knew everything about horses really helped my passion grow,” Bella told Porter Magazine. The model also compared horse riding to yoga, claiming it helped her “maintain balance” amidst her hectic lifestyle.
Unfortunately her plans were derailed by a heartbreaking Lyme disease diagnosis, which her brother Anwar and mother Yolanda also suffer from.
In a now deleted blogpost her mother shared: “Bella had to give up her life-long dream of having a professional riding career and a shot at the Olympics due to her severe symptoms and inability to ride. This was the biggest heartbreak of her life and an extremely sensitive subject for her. She is resilient and focused on a new direction — she's made a name for herself in the modelling industry while she struggles with symptoms of chronic Lyme every day."
Lyme is a bacterial infection caused by being bitten by a tick carrying borrelia bacteria. Left untreated, it develops into a chronic disease that causes debilitating symptoms such as fever, headache, fatigue and facial paralysis. Celebrity Avril Lavigne has also revealed that she was bed-ridden for two years because of the disease, while musician Shania Twain revealed that chronic Lyme almost ended her career after she was diagnosed in 2004.
Although Hadid managed to live with the conditions for the next seven years, in 2023 she announced she was taking a break from modelling due to her condition worsening.
In an Instagram update late last year Hadid shared that she was “finally healthy” after over a decade of treatments, including “100+ days of Lyme, chronic disease, [co-infection] treatment [and] almost 15 years of invisible suffering.” Since then she has posted various photos of herself riding horses, which seemed to infer that the model had returned to her first love.
How she might have come to meet her “six million dollar rider” boyfriend
No one knows exactly how the two met, but we can hazard a guess. It’s been confirmed that Banulos-Ray is Hadid’s trainer — with the model showing off his teaching by placing third at the cutting competition back in January. The 34-year-old Mexican-American cowboy and horse trainer was inducted into the National Cutting Horse Association Riders (NCHA) Hall of Fame aged just 28, making him one of the youngest members. Descending from a strong lineage of cowboys, his father Tiffani Banuelos-Ray, is also a member of the NCHA, and he “credits him immensely for the success he has had thus far in his career.”
And what a career it’s been. According to online reports (and his Instagram bio) he’s made £6 million in competition earnings alone, and has received the title of #1 NCHA leading open rider in 2018, 2020, 2021, and 2022.
Despite his practically unbeatable track record, in an interview with Cowboy and Indians magazine Banuelos-Ray, he concedes he still feels the adrenaline rush. “The day that someone sees me walk into the herd not nervous, I want to be kicked in the a**. If you don’t care enough to accelerate your heart rate, then what are you doing?”
According to his website banulosperformance.com, “Growing up in a large Mexican-American family he was taught the importance of family, hard work, and how to be a horseman.”
Considering Hadid is famously family-orientated (and horse loving), we can see why the two hit it off.
