Ariana Madix appreciates a gift that would keep her safe.
One such gift was from her Vanderpump Rules castmate and longtime friend Sceana Shay, who got her a snowboard helmet.
“Helmets are important,” Madix told People Magazine. “Everyone should be wearing helmets, whether they’re snowboarding, skiing, riding horses, riding motorcycles.”
Madix, 39, went on to explain why that gift happened to the most memorable.
“I have a small head, so sometimes when you go get rentals for things, it’s hard. I have to try on kid-size helmets.”
The Love Island USA host said she thought it “was great because we were going on a snow trip soon after that, and I was able to not only look cute because it’s pink but be safe.”
Madix and Shay have been friends since Vanderpump Rules debuted in 2013 when Shay worked as a waitress and Madix as a bartender at Lisa Vanderpump’s restaurant, SUR.
However, Madix can’t vouch for her own gift-giving ideas as she finds the whole experience daunting to begin with.
“I am not so good at it. I try and I get really lofty big ideas about gifts, and then I overthink and then if one part of it doesn’t work out I get really stressed,” she explained. “Then the day is coming up and I end up just freaking out and getting something that’s not quite what I wanted.”
She also confessed her methods when it comes to even gifting her boyfriend, Daniel Wai, revealing that she likes to create a note folder on her phone to jot down ideas when Wai says he “likes something or that he would get this if he didn’t want to spend on it for himself.”
“I have a little list there that I’ll be going off of and collecting things from,” she said. But despite her diligence, “he’s the gift-giver.”
“He already knows what he wants to get. He’s already gotten me, I think, most of it,” she added, calling him “the best gift-giver I’ve ever met in my life.”
Madix and Wai, a fitness influencer, were first linked in April 2023, a month after Madix learned that her longtime boyfriend, Tom Sandoval, was cheating on her with their Vanderpump Rules costar Rachel ‘Raquel’ Leviss.
