“He’s actually one of the first people I laid eyes on when I moved to the States,” Ayesha told E! News’ Jason Kennedy in October 2017. “Didn’t say two words to him.” She did tell her sisters she’d spotted a cute guy, “and then they made fun of me because they said he looked like a relative.” She shook her head. “Which I don’t see it, but everybody else seems to think that! Maybe it’s ’cause we’re on the same wave-length, I don’t know.”
Steph, a son of former NBA player Dell Curry and older brother of the Philadelphia 76ers’ Seth Curry, went on to play basketball for Davidson College, where he was a two-time Southern Conference Men’s Player of the Year, for 2007-’08 and 2008-’09, and appeared in three straight NCAA tournaments. On a trip out to Los Angeles to attend the ESPYs in 2008, he and Ayesha—who’d moved west to pursue acting—reconnected.
“That was just kinda fate right there, two kids from Charlotte, meeting again in L.A. on a whim,” Steph said in 2016 on In Depth With Graham Bensinger.
Ayesha remembered their re-meet-cute slightly differently…
“We were friends up until I was 19, and I thought we were just friends,” Ayesha told E!, admitting that she did dodge Steph’s first attempt at a kiss. “I didn’t know we had those feelings—I was flattered once I realized halfway through the dive-in that he had other feelings…Oh, he came all the way in and I went like”—she ducked back. “It was mid-conversation, it was very…” she shook her head. But “we had a do-over!”
