2024 Miss Delaware USA Alysa Bainbridge and Philadelphia Eagles podcaster Dalton Holland
2024 Miss Delaware USA Alysa Bainbridge and Philadelphia Eagles podcaster Dalton Holland describe how they met and the start of their relationship.
You’re forgiven if this baby-faced Bear power couple catches your eye.
Dalton Holland is the motor-mouthed founder and co-host of the Delaware-based “302 BIRDS: A Philadelphia Eagles Podcast,” slowly becoming a fixture in the Philadelphia sports scene.
His girlfriend, Alysa Bainbridge, is the more restrained reigning Miss Delaware USA who also works as a traffic anchor for WPVI-TV’s Action News.
Both look younger than their 25 years.
Holland, a Salesianum School graduate, sometimes looks like a teenager when he’s interviewing a guest while wearing a one-size-too-big ballcap with a flattened brim with his slightly oversized glasses. When he’s wearing his Salesianum lanyard or shirt, he’s been mistakenly asked by strangers what year of high school he is in.
And Bainbridge’s tiny frame is paired with a glowing, youthful face that makes her look younger, no matter what makeup she applies.
“When we don’t get carded while buying a drink, I’m like, ‘Are you sure? Is this a joke?'” Holland jokes. For her part, Bainbridge has come to terms with it: “I used to get really annoyed in my early 20s, but we’re told we’ll appreciate it as we get older.”
The college sweethearts settled down in their first home over the past year, living on a quiet cul-de-sac where they live with their pit bull Roxy and two French bulldogs Penelope and Lola ― the same spot where Holland broadcasts the live podcast from his upstairs mancave, which glows in Eagles green lighting.
While the happy couple says they are on the road to eventually getting married as they juggle their growing public personas, their six years together have been marked by bonding over twin tragedies: her 24-year-old brother died of a drug overdose and then his 67-year-old grandmother committed suicide a year later. Both suffered from mental health disorders.
Holland and Bainbridge were both still in their late teens when the back-to-back traumatic losses happened, finding themselves leaning on each other for support.
“We’re still going through it to this day,” Holland says. “So when you have a bad day and maybe hear a song on the radio that reminds you of them, it’s nice to know someone is there who understands.”
College sweethearts thanks to his persistence
It was at Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia when their paths first crossed in 2017. Actually, it was first online when he found her in a university Facebook group. And then spotted her in person at orientation, meeting for the first time in person. “I sat next to her on the first day of class before some other douchebag did,” he cracks.
She adds, “He was very persistent, but I had another boyfriend at the time.”
It wasn’t until 1-1/2 years later when they would reunite ― this time both single ― and began dating in early 2019 after connecting over common loves like the Jersey Shore, Philadelphia sports and how they’re both driven, goal-orientated people.
The pair dated throughout college and decided to move in with each other last year, buying a four-bedroom home off U.S. 40.
Now with twin careers, three dogs and the American dream fully loading, they look to their future and can almost hear wedding bells.
There’s just one problem.
“I just need to be able to afford a ring,” he says. “But if that girl would let me propose with a Ring Pop, it would be done by now.”
Live from Bear, it’s ‘302 BIRDS!’
Holland is a self-described tri-state mutt: he was born in Maryland and grew up in Southern New Jersey before his family moved to Elkton, where he drove 45 minutes each day for high school classes at Salesianum.
“My parents were like, ‘You have a big mouth. You’re from South Jersey. There’s no way we’re sending you to Rising Sun High School,'” he says.
Holland may be a sportscaster-in-the-making, but he didn’t play any sports at Salesianum, although he did raise up the ranks from water boy to manager for the rugby team.
He was admittedly way more nerd than jock.
“I have a million-dollar smile. I need to protect it,” jokes the 5-foot-7-inch, 115-pound Holland. “I wanted to keep my teeth so I just managed the rugby team.”
Even so, he has since carved out a way to live and breathe sports with his podcast, which started in 2021 and is available in audio and video form with an array of co-hosts and both national and local sponsors ranging from TickPick, an online marketplace for events tickets, to Nick’s Pizza in Prices Corner.
The TickPick sponsorship provides him with a dream scenario for an Eagles fan of any age: tickets to all Eagles home games, allowing him to tailgate and attend games he otherwise could not afford.
The road to Miss Delaware USA (and Action News)
For her part, Bainbridge grew up in Leesport, Pennsylvania near Reading, daughter of a pageant queen who also ran pageants even before she was born.
“We were a pageant family,” she says.
Even at a young age, she found herself drawn to the pageant world, suffering her first loss at the age of 5 when she came up short in Berks County’s Little Miss Apple Dumpling pageant, but exacting her revenge when she came back to win the Junior Miss Apple Dumpling when she was a little older.
Over the years, she has racked up an impressive string of wins: Miss Philadelphia in 2019, Miss Berks County in 2020 and Miss Pennsylvania in 2022 before deciding on one final pageant when she won Miss Delaware USA earlier this year.
When he attends pageant events with her, his young looks are usually sure to cause some confusion.
“Sometimes you get looks from people and I’ll joke that I’m her chauffeur,” he says. “But being able to be with Miss Delaware USA helps with that ― there’s a wow factor, I’m not going to lie.”
In between her duties as Miss Delaware USA, Bainbridge freelances as an on-camera TV host, including her Friday afternoon gig on Action News. She majored in communications and has worked as a reporter for WRDE, NBC’s Coast TV, which is based in Salisbury, Maryland with a news division based in Milton.
Tragedies strengthen bond and spur action
Bainbridge is also founder and president of Tyler’s Triumph, a non-profit organization in her late brother’s name that she launched in 2021 to help provide mental health and anti-stigma education. It has also been her platform in many of her pageant runs.
It was 2018 when Tyler died of an opioid overdose, just a year before Holland’s grandmother Dolly took her own life.
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At the time of Tyler’s death, Bainbridge and Holland were not a couple, but he remembers where he was when he heard the news: in Spanish class. He immediately reached out with a comforting message.
“You never forget where you are when you hear something like that. It’s terrible to go through something like that at any age, but that is young. I couldn’t imagine what she was going through,” he says. “It was tough to see someone go through something like that from a distance because you want to help them, but also respect their boundaries.”
In the year after Tyler’s death, Bainbridge split with her boyfriend and Holland also had broken up with a girlfriend he had. They then got together and that’s when Holland’s grandmother died. As he puts it, Bainbridge was his “rock,” understanding the grief he was going through because she was still grappling with the same emotions over her brother.
“She had been through trauma before and was there to tell me you’re not going to grieve overnight ― it takes time,” he says.
It was very early in their partnership. And while such loss could easily unravel a relationship, it did the opposite for them. They grew closer in grief, especially because both lost loved ones who had suffered from mental health illnesses.
“We understood each other,” she says. “We felt less alone.”
Have a story idea? Contact Ryan Cormier of Delaware Online/The News Journal at rcormier@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier) and X (@ryancormier).
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Publish date : 2024-09-14 22:19:00
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