Matt Rogers and Fraser Olender Took ‘Space’ From Each Other After ‘Below Deck’ Star’s Health Scare

Ryan HudginsSun, April 19, 2026 at 8:48 PM UTC

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Courtesy of Fraser Olender/Instagram

Matt Rogers is opening up about where he stands with Fraser Olender after the Below Deck star’s health scare.

“We were already really enjoying being together and then there was this health stuff that entered and so that accelerated things,” Rogers, 36, said on the Wednesday, April 15, episode of his and Bowen Yang’s “Las Culturistas” podcast. “Now where we are at is, he’s off. I can’t say where. … He’s creating the television program many people like. I’m going to see him soon but while he’s been gone and I’ve been sort of busy doing my own thing, we kind of did just take a little bit of space just because of how intense everything had gotten and personal things.”

Rogers and Olender, 33, went public with their romance in November 2025, at the same time that the Below Deck star experienced a health scare. Rogers explained on Wednesday that the pair had been dating for three months when they went to BravoCon.

“I wasn’t even going with the idea of, ‘And we are going to take a photo on the carpet.’ He wanted to take a picture together, I was like, ‘Let’s do it.’ I put it on my Instagram. Then all of a sudden, that very weekend, people are like, ‘Oh, Matt and Fraser are dating.’ As that was happening, and I know this is going to sound dramatic, he had a heart attack in front of me,” Rogers said, while guest Lena Dunham replied, “Doesn’t sound dramatic. It’s true. It’s traumatic, is what it is.”

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He continued, “I feel like what people don’t know — or if you know, you obviously know because it’s horrifying and it’s hard to explain but, you don’t know that a heart attack is happening every time. He had very intense chest pains and couldn’t get comfortable and was short of breath and had to bail on the whole night with us.”

Rogers remembered checking in with Olender later, describing the reality TV star’s symptoms as “ongoing.”

“I’m thinking, like, ‘Is this stress and anxiety [or] whatever?’ We find out much later, after tests come in, that essentially because of this poison that got in his lungs, he had what was the equivalent of a heart attack,” Rogers said. “And it was really bad. We were in the hospital until 5, 5:30 in the morning. We really had only been dating for about three months.”

One day after Rogers’ comments, Olender shared a series of photos via his Instagram — including a couple of the “Las Culturistas” host. “Here & there ft. 🫶🏼,” he captioned the post.

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Olender got candid about his health scare in a December 2025 Instagram post, sharing photos from the hospital.

“This is not chic but very important for me to share ⚠️,” he wrote at the time. “A few weeks ago I was rushed to hospital due to severe chest pains and difficulties breathing. Following this, I spent a week in London hospitals seeing specialists to identify the cause and possible damage of the incident. To keep it simple — I had vape poisoning, (an E-cigarette or Vaping-Associated Lung Injury (EVALI)) and I have never experienced fear or pain like it.”

He continued, “Whatever was in my vape caused me to have a coronary artery vasospasm. Medically, that means the arteries supplying blood to my heart suddenly clamped down. That spasm reduced blood flow enough to cause an ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), better known as a heart attack — not because of a blockage, but because my heart wasn’t getting enough oxygen during the spasm.”

Olender shared that he’s “grateful to still be recovering,” and he wanted to share his health scare with his followers because he "never realized something like this could happen.”

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“If this experience can help even one person rethink vaping, it’s worth telling,” he wrote. “I haven’t touched a vape since this happened and never will. The pain I endured for 24 hours was inexplicable, 2 rounds of morphine didn’t touch the sides and eventually had to be given the strongest pain relief legal to administer in [the] ER — and that only brought my pain from a 10 to a 7.”

He continued, “I could have died for the sake of something so ridiculously stupid, so please do yourselves a favour and give it up too - cold turkey. We do not know enough about these horrific things but I can tell you one thing; that was NOT cute, not even for the plot 👎🏼.”

Olender encouraged his followers to “be safe” and put their “health first.”

“P.s. it’s been nearly 3 weeks off the vape — my skin has never been better, brighter and clearer, there MUST be a correlation,” he wrote. “BEST skincare hack out there 👀.”

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Source: “AOL Entertainment”