Alan Ritchson and wife Catherine tied the knot after breakup twist

Little known by fans is that Alan Ritchson and Catherine, before being a married couple, were an item in their high school years.

It was an instant liking by the Reacher star for his now-wife when he first saw him in a ballet dance class.

In a throwback interview with The Road to Wisdom podcast, Catherine remembered, “We haven’t been ‘together’ since then, but we certainly dated."

There was an instant connection when the teenage couple met, sparking conversation instantly

“I’ll never forget seeing him for the first time in the [dance] studio. I turned to my friend Miriam and I said, ‘Who is that?’ she recalled. “He, at some point, came up to me, and we just got chatting.”

But there was drama because Ritchson, who believed his summer romance was a "fling", led him to dump Catherine.

Regarding this, she joked in the 2023 podcast, “I’ve made him pay for it ever since. He still justifies it. He’s like, ‘You lived 30 minutes away; I couldn’t afford gas.’”

However, as fate has it, the high school romance was down but not out.

Years later, Ritchson reconnected with Catherine through a mutual friend, and in the latter's words, “[The rest is] history after then."

The pair tied the knot in 2006 and share three children.