Matt Rogers broke his silence on his surprise romance with Below Deck‘s Fraser Olender — including why he kept it out of the public eye for months.
“I wasn’t even really trying to soft launch,” Rogers, 35, revealed in Us Weekly‘s exclusive clip from the Tuesday, November 25, episode of Tommy DiDario‘s “I’ve Never Said This Before” podcast about sharing photos with Olender, 33, from BravoCon 2025. “I think I was just like, ‘I’ve been planning to post these pictures.’ It just so happened that me and Fraser took what I thought was the best picture. Out of the ones I was posting, it felt like that one should be first.”
Rogers gushed that he was having a “really, really great time” with Fraser, who appeared on Below Deck since season 9.
“He’s such a wonderful person,” he added. “That’s nice if people are interested and I’ll take it as a good thing. But it’s been hard to watch my [‘Las Culturistas’] podcast grow. The tone at the beginning was us being very honest about our lives. That meant I was talking about my boyfriends — whoever they were. I talk a lot about my sex life and I talk a lot about what I feel about romance.”
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In the past, Rogers got pushback from his exes. “I’m pretty candid and some of my ex-boyfriend did not like being depicted on the podcast,” he said. “I had one relationship and [it ended] really badly. I’m sensitive to sharing information about other people. When it’s about me, it’s whatever. But when it’s about other people, it’s hard.”
Rogers has since pulled back on how much he has shared about himself.
“It gets weird to share intimate details about your personal life — even though people are used to that from you — when you’re, in now, what’s kind of a weird, mixed company. I know that the podcast is big enough where not everyone is listening because they love me or because they are rooting for me,” he explained. “Some people are just casual listeners who [know] information that’s really personal to me and to other people that would perhaps compromise something they didn’t want out there. That is something I have to think about.”
It has been an adjustment for the public figure. “I like sharing things about my life with people that follow me,” he continued. “I do, like, enjoy so many people in my life and I want to share that. So it’s an interesting one.”
After sharing a glimpse into his romance with Olender, Rogers was shocked by the overwhelming interest.
“I figured, maybe, people that were mutual fans of mine and his [would see and care] because this also was my first time really engaging with another public figure in that way. It sounds so annoying and gross to talk about but when people can talk about something, some of them will,” the podcast host recalled. “So it’s just new for me. But I understand why it happened.”
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Rogers clarified that he never intentionally hid his relationship. “I wasn’t hiding it at all. I don’t want to be someone that thinks about when strategically would be a [good time to share something]. I just want to [be] casual,” he said “We had been everywhere together for about three months before it went to the internet and no one cared. I’m sure no one will care in seconds or if they don’t care already, that’s 100 percent great.”
Since getting to know the Below Deck star, Rogers is hopeful about their future.
“I adore this guy. He would be on my Instagram anyway. Everyone that I adore is on my Instagram. I’m really, really blessed with the people that I have in my life — my close friends. I, probably, have 10 to 12 people that I would trust with everything, which makes me really happy and lucky,” he shared. “They show up in the reflection of my life that is the Instagram page.”
Rogers added that his romance originally started on social media. “Before you engage with people, you, obviously, see who they are. We did start talking on Instagram,” he said.” It happened there and then you can judge someone by their Instagram presence when you see someone is also a public figure or on a reality show,. But then when you meet a person and they’re lovely, it doesn’t matter what they do. It just becomes a thing. It’s kind of nice sometimes to look for things you have in common and I think we have in common stuff that’s related to being people that are potentially perceived or followed.”
