She’s a “connector” after all.
“Love Is Blind” alum Leo Braudy tells Page Six’s “Virtual Reali-Tea” that Jill Zarin slid into his DMs in an effort to set him up with her daughter, Ally Shapiro, after the latter’s broken engagement.
“I got a lot of random DMs. Jewish mothers are notorious for being straightforward and aggressive, so I was getting DMs like, ‘My daughter would be perfect for you. Oh my God, you seem like such a nice Jewish boy,’” he says of the social media attention he received following his tenure on Netflix’s tentpole reality dating show.
Braudy, 31, says a note from Zarin, 62, caught his attention in particular.
“And so I get a DM from someone who’s like, ‘Hey, I think my daughter would be good,’” he recalls. “And I saw a [blue] check mark, so I clicked and I saw there was a bunch of followers and I was like, ‘Who is Jill Zarin?’ And I was like, ‘Oh, “Real Housewives.’”
The art dealer says Zarin was confident that he and Shapiro, 32, would click. When the former “Real Housewives of New York City” star reached out to Braudy in December 2024, it had been roughly a month since Shapiro’s split from now-ex-fiancée Jordan Bilfeld was announced in an exclusive statement to Page Six.
“She was like, ‘We live in Miami.’ I happened to be going down to Miami for Art Basel. Her message was actually really nice,” Braudy says, describing Zarin’s approach to facilitating a meetup with Shapiro.
“She was like, ‘Look, whether you date or are just friends … I really think you two would get along.’”
Zarin was right. Braudy tells “Virtual Reali-Tea” that he and Shapiro immediately hit it off.
“The first time we met was actually with Ally and Jill at Art Basel and literally, the moment that we met, I had felt like we had known each other for years,” he says. “She knew and she was totally right. And Jill’s awesome.”
However, it was mutually discerned that Braudy and Shapiro would be better off as friends than romantic partners.
“It’s just a friendship. And we are really, really good friends. She’s awesome. And it’s funny because we have so much in common. Reality show stuff, art stuff. She actually worked at an auction house for a long time,” he shares, adding that “the Jewish thing” has bonded the pair as well.
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“And then also, on a darker note, we both had a parent pass away of cancer so we actually have a lot in common.”
Braudy revealed in “Love Is Blind” Season 7 that both of his parents died from cancer, while Shapiro’s stepfather, Bobby Zarin, passed away in 2018 following a long battle with thyroid cancer.
“But even more than that, we just get long very well. From the moment we met, it was very much like, ‘We’re gonna be really good friends,” Braudy continues, describing his dynamic with Shapiro. “We could tell.”
When asked about the current state of his love life, Braudy admits that he is “not dating that much” these days. “I’m going to be honest. I’m boring, really,” he says. “I’ve been shockingly boring.”