In a 2022 appearance on the “Bachelor Happy Hour” podcast, Sydney Hightower shared the story of how she and Fred Warner met. It started when her season of “The Bachelor” was airing in 2020. A month after the show’s premiere, the San Francisco 49ers lost Super Bowl LIV to the Kansas City Chiefs. Hightower said Warner was really bummed out but it seems the two both had to miss out on getting rings to cross paths. “[He] was hanging out at his house, not leaving his room,” said Hightower. “He would watch shows, but he didn’t watch ‘The Bachelor.’ But his family did.”
It was Warner’s sister-in-law who first realized Hightower was Warner’s type and encouraged him to reach out to her. Despite thinking his sister-in-law’s idea was “crazy,” he was interested enough in Hightower that he decided to take her advice. However, he waited until after Peter Weber sent her home on “The Bachelor” before sliding into her DMs.
Hightower revealed that what made her curious about Warner was the very short and sweet message he sent her: a basketball emoji. She didn’t immediately understand its significance, so she asked him about it. “He was like, ‘Oh, just shooting my shot,'” she recalled. The couple now has their own podcast, “The Warner House,” and Hightower admitted in the first episode that she didn’t even know the 49ers were an NFL team when Warner first contacted her.
