It looks like Paralympian Dylan Alcott may be getting advice from fellow Australian of the Year Grace Tame when it comes to navigating a public break-up.
Last year, Tame quietly split from her ex-fiancé Max Heerey, but didn’t think to announce it. Perhaps she hoped people would simply forget her relationship – one that was plastered all over social media, red carpet events and magazine covers.
We reported in January 2025 that they had called it quits and, to this day, Tame still hasn’t publicly acknowledged the end of her engagement.
A similar situation seems to be unfolding with Alcott and his long-time girlfriend, sexologist Chantelle Otten.
They used to be inseparable but are now leading clearly separate lives. Fuelling the usual intrigue of a celebrity split is the fact that neither party is saying a word.
This week, the Daily Mail made repeated attempts to contact Otten, Alcott and their representatives. The only person who answered their phone told us they were on leave and directed us to another agent who, again, didn’t pick up.
Chantelle Otten and Dylan Alcott have once again sparked split rumours
Rumours of a split first surfaced last year when Otten secured a US working visa, but they both insisted at the time they were still an item.
Fast-forward to today and Otten, 32, is living in New York City while 35-year-old Alcott remains in Australia. Their interactions on social media are sparse and hardly suggest a long-distance couple pining for one another.
The couple first met in 2018 when Otten went to a book signing for Alcott’s inspirational memoir, Able.
For about six years, they were fixtures of one another’s social media pages, while also speaking about their relationship – and their intimacy – in interviews.
Alcott, in particular, stated that his disability was not an obstacle to a fulfilling sex life with the formerly Melbourne-based psychosexologist.
But in the last 18 months or so, things have been suspiciously quiet between the pair.
They are rarely seen together and don’t seem to have made a dedicated social media post about each other since late 2024.
Remember: this was a couple who once flaunted their affections so liberally that a video of them using a sex toy in a restaurant while surrounded by their friends was seemingly par for the course.
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Otten has moved to New York to expand her career while Alcott remains in Melbourne
By contrast, the silence about their relationship today is practically deafening.
And while it’s entirely normal for people to break up or grow apart – or for public figures to choose to live their lives more privately after a period of courting attention – the fact that no one is willing to confirm or deny that their relationship has run its course is… getting a bit odd, to be honest.
Otten, it seems, has settled in New York with a view to expanding her career as a sexologist and social media influencer.
As we made enquiries about her relationship status, she shared a sponsored post on Instagram for a gel that brightens the skin around your ‘intimate areas’.
When she confirmed her stateside move earlier this month, she made no mention of where Alcott fits into her American dream.
‘I’m basically here to do everything I’ve done over in Australia and bring it to the US,’ she told her followers.
Alcott told the Mail last year he wasn’t sure that he would be following Otten to America.
Since then, his social media has been filled with posts of him hanging out with friends on golf courses and partying at his recent Ability Fest at The Timber Yard in Port Melbourne.
The former Australian of the Year has been booking motivational speaking gigs, enmeshing himself even further into the world of sports, and doing a spot of brand ambassadorship, too.
But whereas Otten was once a fixture on his arm at events, she has been completely absent from his public appearances of late.
His last dedicated post about Otten looks to have been in December 2024 when he shared a picture of them together at a friend’s wedding. She would feature, briefly, with their dachshund in a slide from a New Year’s Eve highlight reel posted a year later. Tellingly, that post had the caption: ‘2025. A year of many ups but a few downs.’
Otten last featured Alcott on her account earlier in 2024, sharing images from when they attended the Australian Grand Prix together.
She formally confirmed the stateside move to her Instagram followers earlier this month, but made no mention of where Alcott fits into her American dream
Otten shared a video in January this year, uploading a ‘recap’ of her 2025.
However, the clip, which featured her dog Sauce and one of her visits to a hair salon, didn’t contain any reference to Alcott’s presence in her life.
Interestingly, in her lengthy caption, she said that 2025 was the year of ‘letting things fall away that simply couldn’t come with me’.
She also thanked her ‘family, friends, my management team, my sponsors, my staff, and every single patient’ who ‘backed her’ throughout the year. Alcott did not make the cut.
At this point, the writing really is on the wall. That, or they are so private as to be practically invisible.
Following our numerous attempts to reach the pair – simply to ask if they are still a couple – the most logical conclusion we can draw is that they don’t want their break-up to become a headline.
If we’re wrong and they are still dating, it seems curious that they would go from gushing all over social media to barely breathing a word about each other online.
And why, if they have chosen to go long-distance, have neither of them spoken about how they’ll manage this with Otten in New York and Alcott in Melbourne?
Alcott told the Mail last year he wasn’t certain that he would be following Otten to the US
They certainly weren’t shy before about sharing the intimate details of their relationship, and it’s clear that being together boosted both their public profiles.
Could it be that going public with a break-up simply isn’t the right look? Splits rarely make for good headlines – but if they’re over, how long can this are-they-or-aren’t-they charade realistically continue?
In June last year, during the previous wave of split rumours, the Mail, frustrated by silence from their representatives, approached the couple directly to comment on the state of their relationship.
At the time, they appeared to still be living together in Melbourne – Otten wouldn’t make the move to the Big Apple until February – but had stopped posting about each other as often as they once did. Otten had also just revealed she’d obtained an American work visa and was exploring career opportunities overseas.
The Mail has since made numerous attempts to contact the pair to confirm their relationship status. They are pictured here at the 2024 Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix
‘No, we’re very much together,’ Otten told us while on a morning stroll in Northcote near the home she and Alcott shared.
‘Dyl and I, we both travel a lot for our work, but we live together. We love each other. We’re supporting each other,’ she added.
‘We’re still together. We’ve been together for six years now,’ she stressed, before brushing off the gossip about their relationship as ‘boring’.
We also tracked down Alcott separately as he was jetting out of Melbourne Airport for an engagement for his charity, the Dylan Alcott Foundation.
This was a couple who once flaunted their affections so liberally that a video of them using a sex toy in a restaurant while surrounded by their friends was seemingly par for the course
‘We’re still together,’ the wheelchair tennis champion said, pointing to their shared address as proof.
As for her American working visa, Otten said at the time that gossips were jumping the gun and her plans to move overseas were not yet set in stone.
‘I just got the visa. I haven’t made any decisions. I’m not sure yet. It just came through,’ she told us.
Meanwhile, Alcott revealed at the time that he did not have an American working visa.
When we asked him if he had any plans to move to the US with his girlfriend, he said: ‘I think one day, maybe. I haven’t got a visa yet. We’ll see.’
We’ll see, indeed.
Whatever has happened to them in the last few years, whether they are still together or not, there has certainly been a marked shift in the way they present their relationship to the public
Otten and Alcott once boasted about their love-at-first-sight meeting at his 2018 book signing. The fact Otten had only recently separated from her husband at the time is a detail lost to history.
But whatever has happened to them in the last few years – whether they are still together or not – there has certainly been a marked shift in the way they present their relationship to the public.
Perhaps they have split, but coming clean is either too painful or poses too great a risk to their reputations.
Perhaps their romance has evolved into something they feel no obligation to define.
Or perhaps they are still together but, as Otten has previously suggested, find the constant need to clarify their status to the press ‘boring’.
For now, fans who once followed their inspirational love story are left guessing, creating a vacuum where unkind speculation can thrive. If they wanted to end it, they could do so with a single statement. So why not?
