'Love Is Blind' star Ashley defends husband Tyler and reveals what she knew about his kids before they got married

• Ashley and Tyler from "Love Is Blind" faced a ton of off-screen drama, and it's still ongoing.
• Tyler was at the center of controversy over his admission he fathered three children.
• He said the kids were conceived via sperm donation; the kids' mother says he abandoned them.

"Love Is Blind" season seven may be over, but the drama won't stop coming.

One of the biggest storylines from the recently concluded season, which followed singles in Washington, DC, focused on the relationship between 34-year-old account manager Tyler and 31-year-old marketing director Ashley. They were one of only two couples (out of the six engaged pairs producers initially followed) to ultimately make it to the altar and get married in the finale.

Early in the season, Ashley and Tyler had a relatively undramatic relationship. That was complicated later on by Tyler's revelation in episode nine that he had been a sperm donor for a female friend and her wife — something that hadn't come up pre-engagement in the pods.

But this is "Love Is Blind," and much of the drama happens outside of the millions of eyes (and in turn, subscribers) that Netflix brings to each new season.

News that Tyler had fathered children broke on social media before it was ever addressed on the show, and claims that Tyler was more than a distant sperm donor to his children circulated as well. Ultimately, the controversy is still good for Netflix's bottom line — even if it's happening off-screen, it's keeping "Love Is Blind" in the conversation.

In the end, Ashley and Tyler made it through the drama and confirmed at the October 30 reunion that they were still married. However, they're still facing criticism over Tyler's kids. Here's a recap of their relationship on the show and what they've said about the controversy both during and after the show's airing.

Ashley and Tyler bonded in the pods and made it all the way to the altar, despite a brief hiccup over his kids

In episode one, Ashley is enamored by Tyler's nerves on their first date. They also bond over their shared love of cooking and food, their religious faith, and the fact that they both used to ride horses.

In the same episode, Tyler opens up to Ashley about how hard his mother worked to raise him and his siblings after his grandmother died and his grandfather cut his mother off. As a result, he says, he wants to have a "big family" — someone with whom he could share his love.

The couple celebrates Tyler's birthday on a date in episode three. Tyler proposes to Ashley, and she accepts. Later in that episode, they meet in person for the first time — and luckily, producers choose them to take the post-engagement trip to Mexico with five of the other couples.

Unlike some of the other couples, Ashley and Tyler don't have any significant on-camera tension while on vacation. All in all, the first batch of episodes, which premiered on October 2, leaves their relationship in a good place.

In episode eight, things continue moving along as Tyler gets Ashley's father's blessing. But their story takes a major turn in episodes nine and 10: Cameras capture Ashley and Tyler debriefing about an off-screen conversation in which he revealed that he already fathered three children.

Tyler tells Ashley that he served as a sperm donor for a female friend and her wife, who wanted to have a child. He also told her that the children didn't know what he looked like, and said that he wouldn't be upset if Ashley decided she didn't want to get married because he'd initially kept this information from her.

"I'm not upset by you trying to help a couple have kids. I think that's admirable in certain ways, but the issue comes in with me feeling like I was not getting the full picture of you," Ashley says in episode nine. "And once you're not given the full picture of something, it's hard to not question everything."

But the couple patches things up, and Ashley tells Tyler in episode 11 that she still wants to marry him — though she warns him that any similar revelations going forward may put that in jeopardy. Later in that episode, they make good on one of Ashley's pre-marriage wishes: going skydiving with her fiancé.

In the season seven finale, Ashley and Tyler go on their respective bachelorette and bachelor parties, and then get married. They end the ceremony by jumping the broom — a wedding tradition with roots in American slavery, when Black slaves weren't able to legally wed and jumped a broom instead. Today, some Black Americans have reclaimed the tradition, incorporating it into their weddings as Ashley and Tyler did.

Ashley and Tyler are still married — and said that their on-screen conversations didn't tell the full story

At the season seven reunion, Tyler and Ashley confirmed that they were still married. Tyler said that the almost-year that they had been married had brought "growth." Before the show premiered, they lived in a "bubble" — but after, they were subject to online commentary about their relationship.

In early October, soon after the first batch of episodes premiered on Netflix, allegations circulated online that Tyler had fathered three children, but lied to women that he'd dated about it. Photos appearing to show Tyler posing with the children, including one showing him wearing a shirt that says "Dope dad raising dope kids" while holding two of them, circulated online.

Of course, Ashley and Tyler addressed his children — and the fact that he didn't mention them in the pods — on the show. But what he told Ashley appears to contradict what people are saying online: namely, that the children don't know what he looks like.

Bri Thomas, a woman who identified herself online as the mother of Tyler's children, said that Tyler, who she said was her best friend at the time, had served as a sperm donor for her and her wife. However, after she and her wife separated, Bri said that Tyler became a co-parent to that child, and they later conceived twins naturally together.

According to Bri, the twins even have Tyler's last name. Bri said that she and Tyler didn't date, and she supported his decision to go on the show. However, she said that Tyler hadn't seen the children since September 30, 2023, the day before he left for filming.

Tyler and Ashley didn't explicitly address the controversy while the show was still airing. But after someone accused Tyler on Instagram of "trying to delete your past," he told them to "just be patient" and that he would "explain it all very soon."And on Tuesday, the day before the reunion aired on Netflix, he reposted a morning prayer from the Instagram account @kingofsolomon on his story.

"Help me to turn my trials into my testimonies," one bolded phrase in the prayer reads.

At the reunion, the couple finally spoke about how the controversy had played out both on- and off-screen.

"Those kids, that family, they did not sign up for this," Tyler said of the online controversy.

Tyler said that he had helped his friend and her wife have a child. After his friend's wife "left her high and dry," he decided to help his friend out with the children. According to Tyler, that's why he had been photographed spending time with the kids.

He did not explicitly name Bri as the friend. Bri did not immediately respond to an Instagram DM request for comment sent outside standard business hours.

"Ashley knows all this. This is news to the world. This has never been news to us," he said. "I'm giving this explanation now, because I feel like the world is waiting for it. But I don't owe anyone an explanation but my wife."

Ashley said that what viewers had seen wasn't the full picture and that she and Tyler had an off-camera conversation before they filmed their discussion about the issue. She said that while Tyler didn't want to speak about it on camera, she felt that they needed to address it so that she would be able to continue participating in the show.

However, Ashley said that there was some information that Tyler wasn't comfortable sharing on camera. In turn, she said that Tyler had lied to the cameras that the children didn't know what he looked like.

"Of course he divulged that information to me," Ashley said.

The couple said that they weren't letting online chatter affect their relationship.

"When I said 'I do,' I said 'I do' to all of it. I was aware and I took on what I wanted to," Ashley said. "And this is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of love. This is a rarity, and it's something that is worth risking anything for."

In a recent podcast appearance, Ashley again defended Tyler and their marriage

Though Tyler hasn't given any interviews, Ashley has been making the rounds on the press tour and directly shutting down criticism. She most recently appeared on "The Viall Files" podcast in an episode released Wednesday, where she discussed the controversy in detail and further clarified what she knew about the situation when she decided to marry Tyler.

Ashley explained that Tyler had told her about the kids for the first time after a night out with fellow cast mate Nick Dorka. In that conversation, which wasn't filmed, Ashley was angry at him for withholding the information from her, feeling that he robbed her of the ability to make a fully informed choice. According to Ashley, the two spoke for hours, from 11 p.m. to 4 a.m. the next morning.

The first filmed conversation after that revelation, shown in episode nine, happened the following day. At that point, Ashley said, she had packed her things and left the apartment, and Tyler believed she was leaving him and informed producers. Despite Tyler wanting to keep everything private to protect the kids and family, Ashley told him they needed to speak about it on camera because people would be able to tell her energy had changed.

After their first on-camera conversation about it, Ashley said they had an additional conversation later that night where Tyler went into more detail about the nature of his relationship with the kids. During that conversation, he showed her photos of him with the kids and explained how the situation had blurred the lines of a traditional sperm-donor arrangement.

Ashley said Tyler told her that all three of the kids were conceived via sperm donation with the intent that they'd be raised by Bri and her then-wife and that Tyler only stepped in when Bri's wife left her (which Ashley said happened while Bri was pregnant with the twins). Tyler told her that he'd previously been involved in the kids' lives in an uncle capacity, and that they were aware he was their biological father, but that he took on a bigger role in order to avoid Bri being a single mother.

Ashley maintained that Tyler was never in the kids' lives on a regular basis and that they'd never been to his apartment. She was aware of the photos of Tyler with the kids that circulated on social media while the season was airing (including the one where he was wearing a shirt that said "Dope dad raising dope kids") and claimed that Bri's mother, Lovetta Thomas, was the one who bought those clothes for Tyler and encouraged the kids to view him as their father.

Tyler told Ashley that before going on "Love Is Blind," he realized he needed to begin pulling back from the kids because the situation was getting confusing and he didn't feel connected to them because they were never meant to be his children. Bri was unhappy with that decision, according to Ashley, but Tyler cut ties with her and the kids before leaving for filming. She also said that the idea of Tyler and Bri having slept together was a "false narrative." She called it a mistake on Tyler's part to have blurred the lines so heavily.

Ashley also said that Bri had reached out to her on Instagram to apologize and say that she was praying for them and never intentionally meant to cause Ashley pain. According to Ashley, this outreach happened after Bri initially shared, and then deleted, a post insinuating Tyler abandoned the kids. However, Bri posted again about the situation on October 19, and those videos are still up; it's not clear whether Ashley's "Viall Files" conversation was recorded before or after Bri's new claims about Tyler and their relationship were made public, though host Nick Viall states in the episode that the conversation was recorded prior to the finale airing (October 23).

The major difference in Ashley's version of events and Bri's version is that Tyler told Ashley the twins were conceived via sperm donation. Bri, meanwhile, has said they were unplanned and conceived naturally and even had Tyler's last name.

Ashley said on "The Viall Files" that she had never seen the twins' birth certificate.

"Love Is Blind" season seven, including the reunion, is now streaming on Netflix.