Ilona Maher Talks Current Dating Life: ‘It Could For Sure Be Better’

The rugby star kept it real following her high-scoring ‘Dancing with the Stars’ performance on Tuesday.

Ilona Maher / Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images

Ilona Maher isn’t mincing her words where questions of dating are concerned. Following her Oct. 22 performance on Dancing with the Stars (a high-scoring jazz routine to the tune of “Surface Pressure” from Disney’s Encanto), the 2024 Paris Olympian caught up with Access Hollywood about all the dance—and dating, too.

Since the start of the season, the rugby star has been living in Los Angeles, the site of the weekly Dancing with the Stars episodes and her training alongside partner Alan Bersten. When asked how the city has been treating her—and particularly where dating is concerned—Maher (characteristically) kept it real. “It for sure could be better,” she said.

The Olympic bronze medalist simply doesn’t have the time to devote to dating right now, she admitted. “Here’s the thing: All I do is dance, I eat, I go home and sleep, then I go home and dance again,” she comically remarked. “I’m driving home on a Friday night, everyone’s out having fun—not me. I’m going through the jazz steps in my head. It could be better.”

Maher approached the question with her typical lighthearted candor—and we wouldn’t have expected anything less. But a time constraint isn’t the only thing keeping her from dating, she revealed. She’s also just hyper-focused on Dancing with the Stars—the strength training, the practice, the performances. And it’s paying off, too. On Oct. 22, she and her partner Bersten earned their first nine of the season from one of the judges after their powerful Disney Night performance.

It was a meaningful moment for Maher and Bersten. “[I’m] so proud. It feels really good,” she said of the accomplishment. And when asked if she felt she had “uplifted the world” with her dance (as she had promised to in an Instagram post ahead of the performance), she responded that that is always her goal: “That’s what I’ve always been trying to do,” she said. Just about halfway through season 33 of the show, the pair still have several chances to repeat the feat and uplift others even further—and you can bet that the competitor in Maher will want to make both happen.

So she has her mind trained on Dancing With the Stars for now. And where dating is concerned, the athlete isn’t stressed. Beyond that, her mentality is simple: “It will happen when it’s supposed to happen,” she said last night.