Big Brother 's Derek Xiao and Claire Rehfuss Confirm They're Dating: 'So Excited to See What's Next'
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Big Brother's Derek Xiao and Claire Rehfuss have formed a romantic alliance.
Xiao and Rehfuss, who were two of the 16 contestants on season 23 of the CBS reality show, confirmed on Thursday that they're dating by sharing photos of the couple on their respective Instagram accounts.
"Expect the unexpected? 😅," Xiao captioned a snapshot of the pair taken by Erik Johnson for E-Studios. "Shoutout to all my fellow houseguests for helping us keep one last secret 🙏🏼."
"Coming out of the Big Brother house has been overwhelming, but I'm so lucky to have had Queen Claire by my side making me smile and laugh everyday ❤️," he continued. "I'm so excited to see what's next for us!"
In a post of her own featuring another picture of the duo, Rehfuss wrote, "💗💗💗 the absolute best thing to come out of the most stressful 3 months of my life."
Both posts were quickly flooded with comments from Xiao and Rehfuss' former housemates, with Travis Long writing to Big Brother host Julie Chen Moonves, "did you know about this??🥵🥵."
"Loving of you two 🥺," Long added.
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"I'm absolutely shocked in the best way possible! So happy for you both! 🙌🏻❤️," Brent Champagne commented, while Britini D'Angelo wrote, "❤️❤️❤️ LEGIT SO HAPPY FOR YOU GUYS!!!"
"So do ya'll prefer 'Daire' or 'Clerek'? Just wondering for username of the stan social media accounts I'm making... 😍💕😍💕😍💕," Kyland Young quipped.
Alyssa Lopez joked to the couple: "FOREVER YOUR THIRD WHEEL."
Xiao was evicted from the Big Brother house on the 51st day of his stay, while Rehfuss' run ended on the 65th day during a double eviction.
While the pair were friendly with one another during the competition, they didn't acknowledge their chemistry until arriving at the jury house and spending some time together off camera.
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"I think that we both really felt the chemistry once we got to jury house and could really connect with each other," Rehfuss told Us Weekly in a joint interview with Xiao. "We would stay up late talking every single night and we just really developed a bond."
"I remember the first or second night that she was there, we stayed up all night just talking until 5:00 a.m. That happened every single night for the first, like, five days," Xiao recalled. "That's when I started really thinking like, 'Wait a second, why didn't this happen in the house? There's such a strong connection and chemistry between us.' I think that was the beginning of us thinking about what this could be."
The pair, who both call New York home, were "officially dating" by the time they left Los Angeles, according to Rehfuss.
"I'm really, really happy that we went about it that way," she said of how their romance blossomed off-screen. "First off, our lives just do mesh really, really well. And I am really glad that it started outside of the house."
