Survivor Season 45 contestant Katurah Topps, a civil rights attorney from St. Louis, Missouri living in Brooklyn, New York, was one of the game’s most memorable contestants, winning our Survivor expert Anya’s heart right away, especially when she opened up to castmates about her past growing up in a religious cult. “She can obfuscate her age and her profession in order to advance her position in the game of Survivor,” wrote Ayna. “But this isn’t like that. The emotional intensity of this moment goes way the confines of the game, and that’s all because Katurah decided to let people in — the women on the reward with her, and more broadly, all of us watching at home.”
Now Katurah, and her girlfriend (!!!!), fellow Survivor contestant Sabiyah Broderick, are letting us into their relationship, hard-launching this past weekend on instagram with a slideshow of their love, becoming the series’ first Black queer woman couple. Their instagram caption read:
On Survivor, we both struggled with fire🔥
I couldn’t make it and she went a week without it.But what we’ve built together?
That’s a fire that finally lit itself! ❤️🔥❤️🔥from Players to Partners, from Castmates to Co-dreamers… Meet Survivor’s FIRST Black Queer Woman Couple✨🏳️🌈
via instagram
While Katurah made it to the finale of Season 45, Sabiyah, then a truck driver from Locust Grove, Georgia, was eliminated on the third episode, after being placed on a tribe that Anya described as “yikes!” Although they’d met on the plane to Fiji, due to being placed on different tribes upon arrival, they didn’t get close until after the show had completed filming.
Katurah Topps told Out Magazine: “Our first meeting was on a trip to Cape Cod with our cast after filming…before our season aired. We’d talked on the phone for a bit [prior to the trip], but this was the first time we saw each other in person and the true beginning of our friendship. We realized that our friendship — being ‘besties’ who talked every single day — was turning into something more last fall, around August 2024, and we decided to explore it casually. But, by January of this year, we knew we needed to make it official.”
The pair just celebrated their 6-month anniversary on June 20th, telling Out: “After making sure our foundation was solid, we’re finally ready to share this love with the world.”
Congratulations to the happy couple! We are rooting for them to outwit, outlast, and outlove forever.
