Ten years after their breakup, Ariana Grande and Ricky Alvarez appear to have found their way back to one another—and this time, the pop star didn’t need a press release to confirm it. All it took was one word swapped inside “Thank U, Next,” and the internet did the rest.
The saga began quietly in late June, when Alvarez showed up in the crowd at Grande’s Eternal Sunshine Tour stop in Austin, Texas, on what happened to be her 33rd birthday. During the show, Grande tweaked the iconic line about her former backup dancer, singing “wrote some songs about Ricky, and they still kinda slap,” a departure from the original “now I listen and laugh.” Two days later, the update grew warmer still, with Grande telling the crowd she knew Ricky “still got my back.” Then, this past Monday night at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, she went further, changing the lyric to suggest that she and Alvarez always find their way back to each other.
Three lyric changes in three weeks is not a coincidence, especially not from an artist as famously deliberate about her lyrics as Grande. Fans immediately connected the dots, and gossip outlets weren’t far behind, having already spotted the pair grabbing lunch together in Texas and later shopping at a Whole Foods in Florida over the Fourth of July, reportedly as part of a family gathering.
By Tuesday, the speculation had hardened into confirmation. Sources close to the situation told TMZ that Grande and Alvarez, who originally dated from 2015 to 2016, are officially seeing each other again, though the pair is said to be taking the relationship slowly rather than rushing back into anything serious. People, which first broke the news of the rekindled romance, reported that an insider described Grande as thrilled to have Alvarez back in her life, even as the two keep things low-key for now.
The reunion arrives just months after Grande’s split from her “Wicked” co-star Ethan Slater, which was confirmed in June following roughly three years together. Sources described that breakup as amicable, saying the two remain friendly and supportive of each other after quietly parting ways months earlier.
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Long before any of this, Alvarez already occupied a permanent, if bittersweet, spot in Grande’s musical history. He joined her dance crew back in 2014, the pair began dating the following year, and their romance inspired several of her songs, including “Moonlight” and “True Love,” along with fan speculation around unreleased tracks. Even after their split, Alvarez continued working alongside Grande, joining her Sweetener World Tour as a photographer and videographer. His most famous cameo, though, remains that verse in “Thank U, Next,” where he’s immortalized alongside three of Grande’s other exes as a lesson she says she’s grateful to have learned.
What makes this moment land so hard with fans isn’t just the reunion itself, but the fact that Grande chose to announce it, essentially, in her own handwriting. Rewriting a lyric that once symbolized moving on into one that now hints at loyalty and second chances feels like a very Ariana way of turning the page: publicly, poetically, and set to a beat that millions already know by heart.
For now, neither Grande nor Alvarez has addressed the relationship directly, letting the tour setlist do the talking instead. But between the lyric changes, the low-key outings, and now confirmation from insiders, it’s looking less like a rumor and more like a real-life sequel, one where the girl who once wrote him off with a laugh is now singing that some people really are worth finding your way back to.
