Danielle Maltby moved from Nashville to Cleveland for love. But less than a year later, when her high-profile relationship fell apart in the public eye, the former reality TV star decided to remain in Northeast Ohio and embrace a city that was still new to her.
“I didn’t necessarily choose this place,” she says, “but I wanted to make it feel like home. It was like, Well, I’m here, so I now need to take my life back.”
The first time I met Maltby was in spring 2023, when I interviewed her and her then-boyfriend, Akron native Michael Allio, over coffee at Roasted in Lakewood. The couple was fresh off season eight of Bachelor in Paradise, ABC’s dating show that sends former Bachelor and Bachelorette contestants to a resort in Sayulita, Mexico, to find love.
When the show came calling, Maltby was five years into reality TV retirement. She’d appeared on The Bachelor in 2017; afterward, she went on season four of Bachelor in Paradise but self-eliminated when she didn’t feel a connection with any of the eligible men on the beach. She only agreed to return to the show because she hoped she might hit it off with Allio, a widower and single father who had been a fan favorite when he appeared on The Bachelorette in 2021.
Their relationship blossomed quickly, and at season’s end, the new couple left the beach hand in hand, both literally and figuratively. Allio first said “I love you” on the show’s reunion episode, and in February 2023, Maltby moved to Northeast Ohio to be closer to him.
“I moved up here for someone who I thought wanted to be with me forever,” she says. “I genuinely believed we’d get engaged and married.”
During our first conversation, Allio, a gregarious philanthropist and public speaker, did most of the talking, while a friendly but reserved Maltby chimed in far less often. When it came time to write about them, I felt stumped. I left our conversation knowing plenty about him, but I’d hoped to hear more from her — namely, what it was like to be a moderately famous out-of-towner enthusiastically embracing a much-
maligned city to her massive social media following.
As I mulled it over, though, news broke: Allio announced their split on a fellow Bachelor contestant’s podcast, while Maltby took to her own podcast, The WoMed, to share that she was blindsided by the breakup — just a day after freezing her eggs in New York City, no less. For Bachelor Nation (as fans of the franchise are collectively known), it was a shocking separation, both because it happened at all and because it seemed so, well, not amicable.
“It’s become such a thing in The Bachelor world to make a joint statement [when you break up],” Maltby says, “but there was nothing joint about this. I didn’t decide it.”
Though she found overwhelming support from her 389,000 Instagram followers, many urged her to move back to Nashville. “If you and Michael aren’t together, Ohio is not worth it,” one wrote. “If they broke up, I would expect her to be moving soon,” another speculated. Jokes about Cleveland abounded (as they so often do).
But Maltby made it clear that she wasn’t going anywhere, at least not for now. Since the split, she’s worked to make Cleveland her city, not just some place she moved for the sake of a former flame.
Five months after the breakup, we met for coffee again (a matcha for her, actually) at Rising Star. Without the outgoing Allio to serve as the conversational lead, a much chattier Maltby emerged — one full of laughter and thoughtful insight, with stories to tell and hard-fought wisdom to share.
“I was in the trenches for a few months,” she says of her post-breakup mental state. “I was in, like, constant communication with my therapist. Now, though, I’ve done so much healing, and I just want to help empower anyone who’s in a similar situation.”
As a registered nurse with a healthcare podcast, she’s long been candid about how important therapy has been for her mental health. She sees a therapist every two weeks and keeps notes on her phone about topics she wants to bring up in her sessions — what she’s struggling with, what she’s realizing about herself and what she wants to continue to work through.
“In my last relationship, I was told that I wasn’t resilient enough,” she tells me, alluding to Allio. “I just laughed because that’s the last thing anybody would say about me. I’ve been through so much, and I’m still so hopeful.”
In this case, she’s not just talking about her recent relationship or even the challenges that come with being in the public eye (hello, bullying and general toxicity). The most difficult time in her life was in 2011, years before The Bachelor. At age 25, Maltby was living in Wisconsin with her then-fiance, Nick, when he died of a drug overdose just a week before his 30th birthday. She hadn’t even known he was dealing with addiction — and she was the one who found his body.
“No one expects to have to attempt to resuscitate the person they’re madly in love with,” she recalls. “I carry so much trauma from that. It also made me reflect on patterns and question myself, like, Am I unlovable? My self-worth really took a hit.”
Desperate to find her footing after the tragedy, Maltby moved to Nashville, which felt like a rebirth. She threw herself into a career as a neonatal nurse at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital, and to build her confidence, she auditioned for the Tennessee Titans dance team and even started modeling.
Eventually, she felt ready to date again, which is when a friend nominated her for season 21 of The Bachelor. Maltby had never seen the show, but when her job offered her a leave of absence to pursue it, she decided to do it. Though she didn’t find love with the show’s lead, Nick Viall, she made lifelong friends and became a quick fan favorite, winning over viewers with her positive personality and quiet strength.
Now, eight years and three TV shows later, Maltby is done with reality TV but still deeply grateful for the platform it’s given her. In 2019, she and a fellow nurse launched The WoMed, a podcast for women in medicine, and in 2023, she traveled to Washington, D.C., to lobby lawmakers in support of a bill to protect healthcare workers from workplace violence. She also publicly chronicled the process of freezing her eggs to preserve her fertility.
“I want to be someone who helps lead change and moves the dial on making situations better,” she says, “so to be tossed into this spotlight, well, I’m grateful for it.”
Now that she’s finally come out of the dark emotional place she was in after the breakup, she’s also finding plenty of time to have fun. Maltby credits her coworkers at The Skin Center, a medical spa in Shaker Heights, with helping her discover what Cleveland has to offer. In fact, the job and the people she’s met through it are the number-one reason she chose to stay in the city.
“I work with these incredible women who have brought so much joy to my life,” she gushes. “They rallied around me and made lists of all of these things to take me to and to do together, just to keep me busy and show me the city.”
That included the quintessential Cleveland experience of tailgating in the Muni Lot before a Browns game last fall. (“Browns fans go hard,” jokes Maltby, a diehard Packers fan. “Much love and respect to them.”) She’s seen a show at Blossom Music Center, sipped wine at Tremont’s La Cave Du Vin, and eaten her way through Little Italy; she’s been on morning walks at Edgewater Beach, posed in front of the giant hand statue in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art and hit the lanes to bowl at Mahall’s.
And her to-do list is still long: “I
really want to go to a Guardians game,” she says. “I’m open any suggestions on anywhere that I should go and anything I should do!”
She’s committed to exploring as much of Cleveland as she can — to making it feel like home, even — while continuing to heal and to grow, no matter where she lives or who she dates. Above all, Maltby is most proud of displaying so much of the resilience she was once accused of not having.
“I’m someone who has always gone where life takes me, and I’m always open to an adventure,” she says. “My superpower is that I can make a beautiful life wherever I am.”
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