Sophia Bush and Ashlyn Harris Make Red Carpet Debut at WHCD

Sophia Bush and Ashlyn Harris made their red carpet debut as a couple at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner on Saturday, April 27.

Bush wore a strapless black gown with gold embellishments while Harris complemented her in a black suit with an embellished jacket.

Colin Jost will host the event this year, which is an annual event to raise money for WHCA scholarships and honor the recipients of the WHCA’s journalism awards. President Joe Biden will attend and expects to be roasted by the Saturday Night Live star, as is traditional.

Bush has attended the event on several occasions, but this is her first time attending with Harris, 38. The One Tree Hill alum confirmed her romance with Harris just days prior to the WHCD in an essay for Glamour in which she recalled the end of her marriage to Grant Hughes and confirmed she identifies as queer.

Bush was married to Hughes, 42, for a little more than a year before she filed for divorce in August 2023. She was romantically linked to Harris the following fall.

Related: Sophia Bush and Ashlyn Harris’ Relationship Timeline

Sophia Bush and Ashlyn Harris’ friendship turned romantic on the heels of their respective divorces from Grant Hughes and Ali Krieger, and they’ve been quietly building their relationship. A source exclusively told Us Weekly Bush and Harris “bonded over their breakups and having to start over” in October 2023, one month after they began dating. […]

“It took me confronting a lot of things, what felt like countless sessions of therapy, and some prodding from loved ones, but eventually I asked Ashlyn to have a non-friend-group hang to talk about it,” Bush wrote. “And that meal was four and a half hours long and truly one of the most surreal experiences of my life thus far. In hindsight, maybe it all had to happen slowly and then suddenly all at once. Maybe it was all fated. Maybe it really is a version of invisible string theory.”

Bush emphasized that they didn’t get together until they both walked away from their respective marriages. (Harris was previously married to Ali Krieger, with whom she shares two kids, Sloane, 3, and son Ocean, 20 months.)

After Bush and Harris’ romance was reported last fall, Bush faced “blatant lies,” “violent threats” and “accusations of being a home-wrecker” — all of which Bush declared are untrue.

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“The ones who said I’d left my ex because I suddenly realized I wanted to be with women — my partners have known what I’m into for as long as I have,” she wrote in her Glamour cover story. “The idea that I left my marriage based on some hysterical rendezvous — that, to be crystal-clear, never happened — rather than having taken over a year to do the most soul crushing work of my life? Rather than realizing I had to be the most vulnerable I’ve ever been, on a public stage, despite being terrified to my core? It feels brutal.”

Ashlyn has since gone Instagram official with Bush, sharing the cover story with the caption “Proud of you, babe,” and sharing a photo of them together at the White House Correspondents’ Garden Brunch in Washington, D.C. on Saturday morning.