It sounds like a very Vegas love story, and the cute couple agrees. Olivia Nicole Richards left tiny Owasso, Oklahoma, more than nine years ago to chase her dream of becoming a professional dancer, eventually settling into her current role as dance captain in X Country at Harrah’s Las Vegas. When singer David “Dai” Richards arrived on the Strip from Wales almost five years ago with his mates in Tenors of Rock, a classic rock tribute show that moved from Harrah’s to Planet Hollywood in 2019, he had no idea what would happen when he went to check out the show next door.

The Meeting

Olivia:“So Dai and a couple of friends from his show came down one day to see X Country. Tenors of Rock was performing in the big theater, and X Country was downstairs in the smaller Cabaret theater. They had a 7 o’clock show, and they came down afterwards and watched our show and did a meet-and-greet after. He was hanging out with one of our backstage guys and asked for my name, and then evidently, he had to do some thorough Instagram stalking to find me. Once he did, he DM’d me.”

Dai: “I’m not shy about it. I’m proud. I put the work in.”

Olivia:“We had our first date five days later, and we were pretty much attached at the hip ever since.”

Dai: “We moved in together three months after that. I slid into her DMs, and it actually worked, so that was good.”

Olivia: “Dai was a gentleman. It was like, is he trying to be friends with me, or is he interested? I couldn’t tell at first.”

Dai:“Oh, I was interested. I was very much interested.”

Olivia: “I’ve always had a little bit of a thing for rock stars. I think every girl has that little rock-star fantasy. So I was like, maybe we could be friends, but obviously it quickly became much more on that.”

Dai: “Pat on the back for me.”

The Wedding(s)

Dai:“We got married twice. About eight or nine months into the relationship, we knew we wanted to be together. It was a tricky time at that moment for Tenors of Rock, [because] it had gotten a little quiet. If they had [closed the show], I would have been deported, because my visa was attached to the show. If we eloped, I could stay legally in the country, and I wouldn’t be able to work, but I could stay, and that was what was important at the time, just being able to stay together.”

Olivia: “The funny thing is we planned to keep it under wraps and just tell our families, but we kept getting so excited, we just kept blurting it out to people, so everybody pretty much knew.”

Dai: “I always wanted to propose properly and have a wedding, so we planned to get married last year in April.”

Olivia:“It was supposed to be a New Orleans wedding, and we were inviting our closest family unit and friends to have a fun destination wedding. When everything shut down in March, we still had our fingers crossed, like maybe if this lasts a few weeks everybody will go back. We all know now that’s not how it happened.”

Dai:“Yeah, two weeks off sounded nice—a little vacation, then go back to work.”

Olivia:“Little did we know we’d be chilling out for way too long.”

Dai:“So we rescheduled to September, but then we got to May and … New Orleans struggled with COVID in the beginning. We had this beautiful jazz venue booked, and they were closed.”

Olivia: “After a while we just realized, we’re already married; we just wanted to have a celebration with our families. At that time, restrictions in Vegas were 50 people max, so we had a very safe wedding in the backyard, and it turned out to be really sweet.”

Dai:“My family [in the U.K.] had to Zoom in, because there was just no way. My dad was going through prostate cancer treatment at the time, so he wouldn’t have been able to come over anyway. But it was strange. I never thought we’d do anything like that, without having everybody there. But it worked. We felt like we were as physically safe as we could be.”

Olivia: “And no one got [the virus]. So we were good.”

Love and Showbiz in 2021

Tenors of Rock has yet to reopen at the Sin City Theater at Planet Hollywood, but during the pandemic, Dai launched a side project, Original Chaos, with some friends and fellow Vegas musicians. The band has been performing recently—at Harrah’s, of course—at the Carnaval Court bar. “We’re lucky that Caesars [Entertainment] gave us the opportunity,” he says. “It’s fun to do something new with new people, and with new songs I haven’t done before.”

X Country was the first casino production to return to the stage after the long shutdown, on October 22. Olivia and her castmates have adjusted to the challenging circumstances and happily performing to sold-out, limited-capacity crowds.

“Everyone is going through tough times right now, so the fact they are there shows people are craving live entertainment,” she says. “Vegas has gone through lots of different phases and taken hits in tourism … and seen all kinds of shifts, but if there’s anything we know, it’s that Vegas rebuilds. And performers are hungry. They’re here, and they’re resilient.

“I think we’re going to see a really cool version of Vegas once we get back. Everyone is still motivated to get going and bring out something new.”