Love Stories with Ashton Wood and Will Schmarr

For those who are avid readers of Husskie, you will know we love a good romance story. Which is why when we were recently in Queensland interviewing Ashton Wood about a usual day in her life, her health habits, and friendships with Cartia Mallan and Isabelle Mathers – we couldn’t help ourselves but turn the conversation to finding out more about her relationship with Will Schmarr.

With Will first popping into Ashton’s Instagram feed on July 1 last year, turns out these two have actually known each other for a lot longer than that… On Husskie, we get the lowdown on it all – from first meeting eight years ago to gym dates to moving states for each other.

How long have you and Will been together?
We’ve only been together since May or June last year, officially. We started seeing each other back in March but had a few months of just working it out. We actually met 8 years ago though…

8 years ago?! How did you first meet?
We met through my sister, Cori. She was dating one of his best friend’s back then and I had an instant crush on him the day I met him. Cori actually showed me photos of him before we met him and we both were obsessed – but obviously she was dating his friend! I literally said to my Mum, “I’m going to marry this boy one day – he’s beautiful”. We talk about it now, but when we met – we both had this instant attraction to each other, but for some reason nothing ever happened. We had heaps of situations where we could have kissed or dated, but we just didn’t – we always remained friends and at a distance.

So how did that all change?
I think it was just the universe making sure the timing was going to be right. Will obviously went through that silly boy stage at 18 and I was doing my thing – travelling and moving interstate, plus I was a bit younger. But basically last year I broke up with my ex-boyfriend and then quit my job… I literally said “see ya” to anything that wasn’t serving me happiness anymore! And then I saw on Will’s IG Stories that he got his PT fitness certificate and I sent him a DM saying: “Are you PTing?” and he was like “Yeah!”. I was in New York at the time, so I messaged: “When I’m back, train me!” and he was like: “For sure! Come in and we’ll have a consult”.

The training sessions obviously went well then…!
We trained a few times and there was definitely some tension there! And then he started asking me if I wanted to get breakfast after and then we just started hanging out and having movie nights… and then it just happened. It eventually sparked into a relationship. We’d both just got out of one, so we were very hesitant to make it a thing, plus I was about to move interstate again and really wanted to focus on myself this year so didn’t want to be in a relationship – but we just couldn’t not. We’re super happy – so it worked out well.

How did it go from casually seeing each other to proper dating?
It moved quite quickly. He was really bad at dealing with the long distance, he didn’t handle it very well – so he was like “Someone’s got to move!” So that was pretty much when I was like: “Okay, I can do my job from anywhere – I’ll move back to the Gold Coast and just travel back and forth from Sydney.” And then the connection and chemistry was just super strong and he was like: “I’ve never felt this way before – I’ve never actually been in love. I’ve loved girls and cared for them, but never had this feeling”. And I was the same, so we thought: ‘let’s give it a crack’. So he asked me out and that’s how it happened.

Why do you think the two of you make such a good couple?
We balance out each other really well. I think when you find the right person, everything is better.