They’re the Winter Olympics’ most glamorous couple. But when Shaun White goes for his fourth and final gold at this month, his girlfriend, actress Nina Dobrev, won’t be there.
Due to strict COVID regulations, the “Vampire Diaries” actress has been banned from cheering on the snowboarding champ in Beijing.
But that won’t stop her from supporting him at the home they now share in LA, according to friends who also said an engagement between the pair is imminent.
“They are so freaking cute and solid together,” said one friend of the couple. “I would not be surprised if an engagement happens any day now.”
The pair recently took the next step in their relationship when Dobrev moved into White’s LA home (he also has a house in Las Vegas and recently sold his NYC apartment). They both love dogs — Dobrev has a pooch called Maverick and White has a French bulldog called Steve. The friend of the couple said: “They share so many interests, they’re both driven, they’re both into self-healing and well-being. They’re both very spiritual and motivated.
“They’ve both worked so hard for so many years to make their own careers, so now they’ve decided that any free minute they get, they spend with each other.”
The couple has reportedly been dating since April 2020, but first met at an event for motivational speaker Tony Robbins in Florida in 2019, where they were both giving presentations.
“I actually didn’t know anything about her,” White has said of the “Degrassi” star, who agreed to have dinner with him afterwards.
White told People magazine that his ego took a bruising when staff at the restaurant seemed more excited to meet her than him.
“The place was packed … And she was like, ‘Let me go see if I can get a table,’” he said. He assumed that Dobrev would drop his name to get a table, but after they were seated, a server actually asked Dobrev for a photo.
White recalled: “I was like, ‘What’s happening? What’s going on’ It was actually really funny.”
Dobrev made their relationship Instagram-official in May 2020 when she shared a photo of herself wielding a pair of scissors as her new love pulled a jokey “frightened” face.
The couple has much in common. They’re both entrepreneurs. White has already launched his own snowboarding brand “WHITESPACE” and has been showing off his clothing collaboration with Louis Vuitton designer Virgil Abloh, who tragically died last November at 41.
Dobrev, meanwhile, helped raise $22 million in IPO funding in December to help fuel the “Fresh Vine Wine” business she launched with her best friend, actress Julianne Hough.
She’s also a great snowboarder, which she proved this week in an Instagram post showing her hitting the slopes. “Shaun told me she’s great — he didn’t teach her, she learned as a kid,” said the friend.
They’ve stuck together through this past year, even though it meant a lot of long-distance love, as White, 35, trained in Europe and Dobrev, 33, was filming in the States, including her yet-to-be released Netflix movie, “The Out-Laws,” with Pierce Brosnan and Ellen Barkin.
One friend of Nina said: “She made a lot of movies last year and it was tough doing long distance. Nina was in Atlanta shooting and Shaun would fly to see her just for a weekend, and she would fly to Austria on her weeks off.”
But, since the end of last year, White moved his training to Colorado and Dobrev was constantly by his side. “She was with him the entire time,” said the friend: “All apart from one day recently when she went to LA for a press day.”
When Dobrev celebrated her birthday on Jan. 9, we’re told White whisked her away for a romantic day just hours after his qualifying event at Mammoth Mountain. The pair bid farewell on Sunday when White jetted off to China ahead of the opening ceremony on Friday.
Taking home any medal from the Games will make White the most decorated men’s snowboarder ever. The three-time gold medalist is chasing one last epic moment in the Men’s Halfpipe, starting with his qualifying event on Feb. 8.
Dobrev’s friend added: “She is so excited for the Olympics. You can see she’s been posting about being ‘Team USA’ and it’s not even her home country!”
The actress was born Nikolina Kamenova Dobreva in Sofia, Bulgaria, and immigrated at age two to Canada, where she was raised in Toronto. Her father, Kamen, is a computer specialist and her mother, Michaela, is an artist. She has an older brother called Alexander.
Dobrev has previously dated her “Vampire Diaries” co-star Ian Somerhalder from 2011 to 2013, “Bridge of Spies” actor Austin Stowell from 2015 to 2016 and was linked to former “Scream Queens” star Glen Powell in 2017.
White, meanwhile, had a five-year relationship with Phantogram frontwoman Sarah Barthel before their split in 2019. Sources said they remain “friendly and cordial.” White has also tried to move on from sexual misconduct allegations that surfaced shortly after he won his third gold medal during the 2018 games.
According to the suit, White made vulgar sexual remarks to Lena Zawaideh, the former drummer of White’s rock band “Bad Things,” and also sent her sexually explicit images of “engorged and erect penises” and forced her to watch sexually disturbing videos in 2016.
The suit was settled in May 2017 for an undisclosed amount. White later said he had “grown as a person over the years” and is “proud of who I am today.”
Looking forward, White has said he can’t wait to have kids. His older sister Kari is a mom-of-one and pregnant again, and his older brother Jesse is already a father to two little boys. White told Us Weekly last month: “I would love to be a dad.
“It’s just something that seems so exciting, you know? I love being around people, and I love the idea of having someone other than my own pursuits to look after.”
He added, “For a guy like myself that’s really poured his everything into one aspect of life, which is competing in snowboarding, I feel like over the years, I’ve gathered a more well-rounded life with other things going on. Something like that just seems like an amazing turning of the page, a new chapter. … I wanna take this on.”
Dobrev, meanwhile, has historically kept her romantic life out of the spotlight, telling Cosmopolitan magazine: “I don’t typically post photos with significant others, which is funny, because when I do post a photo with a guy, the media will pick it up and assume I’m dating him. It makes me laugh because, in reality, if he is on my Instagram, that means I’m not dating him!”
But in a telling sign of just how serious she is about White, she is now posting non-stop photos of him, and has revealed how her mom can’t wait for her to have kids.
“I really think this is it for both of them,” said the friend of the couple.
