“It’s honestly quite sick when I think about it,” Reid says, while Lochte and fiancée Molly Gillihan insist there was no affair

NEED TO KNOW

• Kayla Reid says she’s speaking out now about the end of her eight-year marriage to Ryan Lochte to share her “truth,” including how his new fiancée, Molly Gillihan, used to be in her circle of friends
• “And lo and behold, she was dating my husband,” Reid says in a new interview with PEOPLE
• Gillihan is pushing back on Reid’s version of events

Last June, Kayla Reid was in Las Vegas celebrating son Caiden’s eighth birthday when she dashed off a brief, bitter text to someone she had once considered something like a friend.

“Desperate piece of s—,” she wrote to Molly Gillihan.

Almost no one knew, but Gillihan had started dating Reid’s estranged husband, Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte, weeks into what became a messy divorce process. 

“Want to explain?” Gillihan responded to Reid, adding a question-mark emoji to the original message. “Or just wanted to send that.”

Reid returned volley: “No need. I think you have a few brain cells.”

About two weeks later, Gillihan called Reid, prompting another exchange. 

“Wrong Lochte,” Reid texted back the next morning, to which Gillihan replied: “Nope but let’s stop this back and [forth].”

Over the years, the pair had traded invites to happy hours and Mother’s Day parties, and advice, both personal and professional, about career changes and local schools. 

But for Lochte, a 12-time Olympic medalist and former reality TV star, there was little agreement over who was in the right and who was in the wrong. Reid, reeling from the recent end of her marriage, believed she had been betrayed and caught two new lovers in a tryst; Gillihan called it a new chapter with someone she had fallen for unexpectedly.

A year later, they agree at least on this much: They are not friends and never really were.

In a new interview with PEOPLE for this week’s issue, Reid is reflecting on the headline-making end of her eight-year marriage to Lochte, with whom she shares three children. Reid, 35, is loath to even mention Gillihan by name.

“Molly’s someone I knew from Gainesville,” says the model-turned-Realtor, noting, “I’ll use the term ‘friend’ lightly.”

“I even at one point was helping her facilitate … She was wanting to open up a kid’s cafe,” Reid says. “So I was helping her with some real estate work, and we have a ton of mutual friends. She followed me on every social platform and would often send me encouraging messages and want to hang out.”

As her relationship with Lochte, 42, unraveled, Reid compiled copious photos, videos, screenshots and other records that document her account, some of which she shared with PEOPLE.

Speaking out now, she says, is about standing in her “truth.”

Lochte has offered his own view of their split in interviews, criticizing Reid as unsupportive and emotionally hostile, reportedly likening her to a “gold digger” — a particularly wounding insult, Reid says. Their bad blood has spilled onto social media.

Perhaps the most debated point is about Gillihan. 

Lochte agrees with his ex-wife that he struggled with infidelity and substance abuse while they were married. “I wasn’t ready to be a husband or the man my family deserved at that point in my life,” Lochte told PEOPLE in a statement. But he and Gillihan both say they did not have an affair before Reid walked away from the former Olympian, officially filing for divorce on March 26, 2025.

That’s not how Reid sees it. Lochte and Gillihan’s anniversary is April 9.

“It’s honestly quite sick when I think about it,” Reid says, remembering how Gillihan, when they were friendly, was “encouraging me [after filing for divorce] that I will find an amazing man and complimenting how beautiful and lucky I was, and how he [Lochte] was a coward and how I deserved so much better.”

But, Reid said, Gillihan “was dating him behind my back.” 

She says that Lochte had even privately messaged Gillihan years earlier, without Reid knowing. Gillihan says she rebuffed him. 

Early in the divorce, before Reid made it public in June 2025, she “confided in” Gillihan. “We had an hour and a half conversation on the phone. She knew a lot of the struggles that I was dealing with. And she had gone through some similar stuff. … And lo and behold, she was dating my husband,” Reid says.

According to Reid, in early 2025, Gillihan began asking around in their friend group about the status of Reid’s relationship with Lochte, though no one knew they were having problems.

Gillihan and Lochte have since relocated to Missouri, where Lochte teaches college swimming. Reid is still based in Gainesville, Fla., and has primary custody of their son and daughters, Georgia and Liv.

Lochte told PEOPLE last year that his romance with Gillihan was a whirlwind: “It’s so crazy this is happening so fast, our connection, but we can’t hide it.”

He proposed in June and, after finalizing his divorce with Reid in early July, told PEOPLE he was looking forward to planning his wedding.

In a statement to PEOPLE, Gillihan pushed back on Reid’s description of their acquaintanceship and her relationship with Lochte.

Yes, she said, “Ryan reached out to me back in 2019 while he was still married. I made it very clear that I wasn’t interested in talking to or pursuing a married man, so nothing ever came of it. After that, I never spoke to Ryan during the course of his marriage.”

In 2025, Gillihan says, Reid “called me asking whether [Lochte] had been calling, texting, or seeing me. I mostly just listened because I know firsthand how painful divorce can be. Looking back, I wish I had never taken that phone call.”

“At the time, I felt for both her and Ryan, and I wanted to be certain their relationship was truly over before I allowed myself to even consider anything,” Gillihan says. “In hindsight, taking that phone call was the biggest mistake I could have made. Ryan didn’t reach out to me again until he was living independently and the divorce proceedings had already begun.”

Gillihan insists she was reluctant to date him at first. “I was incredibly hesitant because he had previously reached out to me while he was married and that was an obvious red flag to me. I also had no desire to become part of a complicated situation,” she says.

But her view changed over time: “Behind closed doors, we’ve had many difficult conversations and didn’t know if I could be with someone with his past actions in his marriage but it honestly made him and I stronger and lean on each other.”

“I’ve watched him put in the work to become a stronger, healthier, and more honest man,” Gillihan says of Lochte. ‘It breaks my heart that people continue to define him by one chapter of his life when I’ve witnessed how much effort he’s put into growing from it.”

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Another thing she and Reid agree on? They say they’re both ready to move on.

“I’m rebuilding my life, and I’m so excited for the future,” says Reid, who hosts a podcast, The Comeback Era, with friend and Bachelor contestant Caroline Lunny.

As for Gillihan, she says, “My focus has never been on the past. It’s on the life Ryan and I are building together, our family, and creating a happy, healthy future for all of our children. That’s where my heart is, and that’s where it will remain.”

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