Vanessa Hudgens Is “Grateful” That Austin Butler Split “Pushed Her To The Right Person”

Though Vanessa Hudgens is now happily married, she’s taking the time to reminisce about her past relationship with fellow actor Austin Butler and explaining why she’s “grateful” for their breakup.

Appearing on the She Pivots podcast, Vanessa Hudgens opened up about how she feels her split from her long-term boyfriend Austin Butler “pushed her to the right person” — a.k.a. her current husband, professional baseball player Cole Trucker. “My last breakup really catapulted me into a very, very special place,” Hudgens said on the podcast, referring to Butler. “It pushed me to the right person, which I’m so grateful for.”

Vanessa Hudgens and Austin Butler at the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show on November 7, 2012.

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If you are new here, let us jog your memory briefly. Butler and Hudgens were together for almost a decade. Though they reportedly met in 2005, the pair began dating in 2011 — yes, that’s, pre-Elvis accent — before calling it quits in 2020. Before Butler, Hudgens had famously dated her High School Musical costar Zac Efron until 2010.

“I feel like so much of my character was built from my breakups,” Hudgens explained on the podcast in hindsight. She went on to wax poetic about her current husband, calling him “the most supportive, real, understanding human being that [she has] ever met.”

Hudgens and Trucker met during a Zoom meditation session led by Jay Shetty in October 2020. After noticing Truck on the Zoom panel, Hudgens wrote down his name, found him on Instagram, and sent him a DM the next day. After two years and a bit of dating, the pair got engaged in February 2023 under the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France, before tying the knot later that year.

Cole Tucker and Vanessa Hudgens at the tick, tick…BOOM! premiere on November 10, 2021.

After months of being engaged, the two got married this past December during a ceremony held in Tulum, Mexico. “It was genuinely the most magical weekend of my life,” Vanessa told Vogue about the wedding. “I am so grateful that we got to have a private wedding, and it helped that I took everyone’s phones away. It was amazing because at the dinner, I would look around, and everyone was talking to each other — our family and friend groups coming together and creating real relationships that I know they’re going to invest real time into.”