When Gabby Windey walks into her Cosmopolitan shoot, she’s harboring a secret.
It’s not that she’s a Traitor, although some of her fellow contestants on The Traitors season 3 seem to think so. When she steps a manicured toe off an escalator and is immediately recognized by a fan—maybe from her time as the face of The Bachelorette season 19, maybe from her five years as a Denver Broncos cheerleader, or maybe from nearly winning Dancing With the Stars season 31, take your pick—she has to deflect. “I had to yank my sleeves down to cover my hands,” she says to me. “I hope they didn’t notice.”
The secret? That would be the beautiful Cartier wedding ring on her finger because…surprise: Gabby Windey and her girlfriend Robby Hoffman are married!
The television star and the comedian quietly tied the knot in a 20-minute Las Vegas ceremony earlier this year, complete with a disengaged minister in red sneakers (“Shout-out to Reverend Nature!”) and a dance down the aisle to Chappell Roan.
“We had just evacuated from the fires. Literally cue Rihanna, ‘We found love in a hopeless place,’” Gabby shares. “What better time to get married than right now? Because if the world is ending, we want to be with each other.”
Before Cosmopolitan’s 2025 Love Ball, Gabby and Robby penciled me in for dinner at Maison Premiere’s heart-shaped table during Valentine’s Week—where the newlyweds sat curled into each other, snacking on complimentary oysters sent to Gabby from a couple across the way (“We love you on Traitors!”)—to spill the details of their surprise engagement and marriage.
Their wedding story hits recognizable beats—the intimate proposal, the white dress, the aforementioned Cartier rings—but begins rather unusually: with Gabby and Robby fleeing Los Angeles amid devastating wildfires, cat in tow.
Robby: It all started when she smelled the smoke.
Gabby: I’ve been in a fire before in Colorado where I was evacuated, so I was familiar with the process. Seeing smoke inside our house was alarming, but of course we weren’t getting any of the government-aided text messages. We weren’t getting any guidance. It all happened so fast.
Robby: Suddenly, the fan was letting in ash. A very thin dusting of ash.
Gabby: It was the middle of the night. There was ash everywhere. I defaulted to you because I didn’t want to be too pushy or get you out of your comfort zone. I was like, “Do you think we should go?”
Robby: It could have been stressful evacuating, especially with our cat. I got one of my grandfather’s paintings. She took keepsakes from childhood—
Gabby: —I took my podcasting equipment. I’m like, If everything burns down, I have a contract. Who knows what kind of lawsuit they’re gonna hit me with? I need a way to make money if everything burns down.
Robby: Good point. She looked at me—and I was so tired. I had just done a show, business as usual—and she was like, “You think we should go?” And her asking me that, I just went, “Yes.” We were on the same page about this. Better safe than sorry.
Gabby: It’s my mentality with everything. I’m a nurse—safety is always first, and a lot of harm can be prevented if you act prophylactically. We packed up the car in an hour and a half.
Robby: We could’ve been fighting. We could’ve been bickering. It’s very stressful deciding what to take in a moment’s notice. Our fence was blown over. The wind was apocalyptic. We were exhausted, and once we were on the road, we were calling places.
Gabby: We called Palm Springs. Nobody answered. We were like, “There’s a fire.” And they were like, “Sorry, we can’t help you.” So we just kept driving east. To Vegas.
Robby: I was like, “What place has hotels 24/7 no matter what? Vegas! An hour and a half longer a drive? Well, we’re already in the car.” So we did it, and as we were driving out, we saw the fire.
Gabby: We were like, “L.A. is burning down. There goes the industry, there go the studios.” It was so crazy to think of all those things at once, but it’s what brought us closer.
Blumarine dress. Adrienne Landau hat. Deborah Marquit bra. Falke tights.
Robby: We got to Vegas. She went, “Maybe I have a connection” and started emailing.
Gabby: She didn’t want to use the word “evacuation” when asking people.
Robby: I didn’t want to scare people!
Gabby: Yeah, but I wanted to scare people.
Robby: She wanted to scare people. I feel bad putting people out.
Gabby: Palm Springs had no problem saying no even with the word “evacuation.”
Robby: So Gabby sent an email with the truth, like, “Hey, we’ve evacuated, do you have any recommendations?” We got a call a half hour later, “Oh my god, no problem—stay as long as you want.” We got to Vegas at 7:30 in the morning, and they gave us the penthouse suite.
Gabby: It was like out of a movie.
Robby: It looked like a wedding suite. Gabby turned to me and she went, “Should we get married?” And look: I’ve been proposing since the day I met her. We got to this room and it’s like out of a mafia movie, 12-foot ceilings, a separate bedroom from the living room, that type of hotel. And we were like, “Whoa.” And then Gabby floated getting married.
Gabby: It was nice, it being my idea. Robby was literally ready to propose three weeks in and I’m always the one pumping the brakes, but when something feels right, it just feels right. I think it was better for the both of us that it was my idea. She kept checking in like, “Are you serious?”
Robby: And, by the way, we kept checking the news. We weren’t able to go back to L.A. and the fire was coming closer to our house.
Gabby: We were really living in fear.
Robby: So we were half checking the news, half clutching each other. We could have been fighting, but we felt like even through the process of maybe losing everything, we had each other. So it felt braggadocious when she said we should get married. I hate when people are suffering and then we’re having a celebration, and it wasn’t that. It was like, No, we actually want to be married.
Gabby: It’s giving Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey when they divorced and came back together after 9/11. They were like, “No, actually, we do want to be together because the world is ending.” It was just us two. We did everything in two days. We were just going to show up to a chapel, but then I said, “Oh, no. If it’s okay, I actually want you to ask me.”
Raimundo Langlois top. Dolce & Gabbana bra and briefs.
Gabby: She was going to propose in six months anyway, so she actually had a plan. We do the New York Times crossword, Wordle, and Connections every morning together over a cup of coffee. That’s our thing.
Robby: I was going a mile a minute at this point, because every day we were in Vegas, we couldn’t go home. So there was that timeline, very bizarre. And at the same time, I was like, Is she serious? Because my dream is coming true. I want to be married to her—I don’t care how. Finally by the third or fourth day of being like, “Should we do this?” we realized, we get a lot of attention—as a couple, as individuals, for what I do for work, for what she does for work—we get a tremendous amount of attention. It’s something we appreciate and we love. But you know what? Having this moment just for us? It felt right.
Gabby: Totally, just us. Both of us have atypical, non-totally-nuclear families, so we wanted it to be just us anyway. But back to the proposal: In the morning, we went to do the crossword, but it wasn’t the New York Times.
Robby: I had a friend make a crossword. I gave him the clues and the answers, and I said it had to say, “WILL YOU MARRY ME, GABBY.”
Gabby: Robby was like, “Oh, I have a streak with The Atlantic,” and I said, “Okay, whatever.” Nothing was clicking. I thought we were going on a walk later and that’s when everything—
Robby: That was my foil, the afternoon walk. My red herring.
Gabby: She’s always two steps ahead. So I thought nothing of the different crossword.
Robby: She wasn’t thinking the proposal was coming in the morning. She was thinking it was coming in the afternoon.
Gabby: So I was doing this off-brand crossword thinking, Whatever, fine, she’s got a streak. We started and the first clue was “a document signed when someone dies.” I was like, “Maybe a deed.” And she said, “How about a will?” So the crossword went on, but the downs didn’t make sense. I was like, “There’s no way this is a word down—it’s YLEB.” The last clue was “a chatty or talkative person,” and I said, “Cathy. A chatty Cathy.”
Robby: And I was like, “I think it could be GABBY.” At this point, it was like a farce. We were in an I Think You Should Leave sketch. I didn’t know what’s going on—I was so nervous. And at the end, she went, “MYREB?” She’s always a step ahead of what I’m solving in our crosswords, so if I get something across, I know she’s already figured out the down.
Gabby: She was answering the horizontal clues so fast that I basically tuned them out and tried focusing on the downs.
Robby: At this point, I’m not even alive.
Gabby: No, she answered them so fast that I didn’t even have a chance.
Robby: We literally got to the final one where she said, “Cathy,” and the rest of it—WILL YOU MARRY ME—existed. And she was like, “LYREB?” I finally had to just say it. When you plan, God laughs. And she went, “Baby??” and I had the ring.
Gabby: We were side by side in bed, and she was like, “Will you marry me, Gabby?”
Robby: She said yes! And we were engaged for a day.
Gabby: We had our engagement dinner at the Wynn buffet over crab legs.
Robby: All you can eat, and it was too delicious. I have this picture I love of Gabby with crab legs. We had the best engagement.
Merz b. Schwanen briefs. East Village Hats veil. Jennifer Behr veil.
Gabby: We did some shopping around for chapels. Robby is really good at admin, and she found the same chapel that Kourtney Kardashian and Travis Barker, and Kelly Ripa and what’s-his-name—
Robby: I just looked up what couples, good couples, used. I didn’t want to do the Britney—and I love Britney! We share the same birthday, my God, December 2, but she was married 72 hours—that’s not the energy you want to bring. But the chapel I found had longer-standing relationships.
Gabby: You found the chapel, and the day you went ring shopping, I went dress shopping.
Robby: Our wedding was $799. That included the limousine. That included the photos. That included the minister.
Gabby: At first I wanted to go full Kourtney Kardashian, where she went in casual leather and Prada sunglasses, but we wanted to do our own thing. I went into department stores and the first dress I saw on the mannequin was off-white lace, and I was like, “This is gonna be it.” It was the only one they had in stock. It was a little tight and made my butt look huge, but it was perfect. Everything just fell into place so naturally. It felt so serendipitous and so precious and so meant to be.
Robby: I actually can’t believe how perfect it was. It was the best wedding I’ve ever been to. And by the way, we got the most expensive wedding package they offered—they have one for $99! Have yourself a good night. We got to spend our wedding truly together. We love to be together.
Gabby: It was literally the best night of my life. We were dancing, taking pictures. We got maybe 15 minutes flat with Reverend Nature.
Robby: Shout-out to Reverend Nature!
Gabby: She was our minister. She wore red sneakers. She was pretty disengaged, which is how we like it because we don’t need too many people paying attention to us. She said a couple things, left the room, and then we got some time with the photographer, Big Nate.
Robby: My grandfather’s name was Nathan, so to have him there was just an unbelievable feeling for me. I wore all my own clothing.
Gabby: Big Nate captured our essence. We walked down the aisle to “H-O-T T-O G-O,” Chappell Roan. He was directing us the whole time. He’d tell Robby, “My man, move an inch this way. Now hit a pose.” But Robby, she always has so much swagger that he was like, “You do you.”
Robby: It was just for us.
Gabby: There was no performance about it. I feel like there can be so much pressure on whoever’s watching you at weddings. We were so nervous just having it be us, too. Even our vows, I’ve never heard you talk so fast.
Robby: We had to reread our vows because I was so excited and nervous.
Gabby: It was the best. In a weird way, it was giving Bachelor because there were roses everywhere. I never envisioned my wedding as a kid or anything, but that’s part of what made this feel so right. Actually being there and feeling it, it was so us.
Robby: We had no expectations. We just had love and openness.
Gabby: I just love being with Robby, so knowing that I got her one-on-one to celebrate this beautiful night, I could cry. It was joy.
Robby: And then we were married. And on the way back, we had to pick up air purifiers with our cat. Our house survived and we were returning married to whatever the state of the neighborhood was. We got so lucky. We really didn’t know how our house would turn out. All we knew was we had each other and felt home in each other.
Gabby: People are like, “How does it feel after you’re married? Does it feel the same?” And the answer is honestly no—it feels better. I feel more committed. This is my wife.
Robby: I think we just feel more comfortable.
Gabby: There’s a comfort that comes with knowing you want to be together forever. Having Robby in my corner and believing in me, she’s helped me so much in the two years we’ve been together. This is the person I want next to me my whole life. I wish it was just us two all the time.
Robby: We have the same cadence. I know it seems to people we’re so different, but it gels. We have the same core. I love her for her, and she loves me for me.
‘Traitors’ Star Dylan Efron Isn’t So Miss GuidedStylist: Kaia Carioli. Hair: Clay Nielsen for Leonor Greyl. Makeup: Sasha Borax for Gucci Beauty. Shot on location at The Thompson Central Park Hotel.
