Ariel Winter Breaks Free: New Love, Big Plans, and Life Beyond the Spotlight

Ariel Winter and Luke Benward are still a thing — and not the flaky, Instagram-soft-launch kind. Real relationship, real time, still going strong after years of noise around her body, the media trying to sexualize her at every turn, and a pretty public family legal mess. If you have the sense they quietly built their own bubble and stuck to it, you are correct.

Where they are now

Winter talked about the relationship in an E! News interview in October 2024, and she did not sugarcoat the work part of it.

"I believe a relationship is more than just love. I believe it’s respect. I believe it’s work. You can’t just love somebody. And I really feel like we have all of those things."

When the future came up, she kept it simple and very them: she loves him, they love their life, and the dogs are basically their kids. Her words: "We got our dog kids, and we love our life."

The living situation (because this part gets confusing)

Here is where the reporting gets a little tangled. One line you see out there says she relocated to Los Angeles with Benward after Modern Family finished filming in 2020. Elsewhere, she has said that once the show wrapped, she actually moved out of L.A. to get some quiet, leaned into cooking, and became full-time dog mom to six pups. Either way, the bottom line is the same: post-Modern Family, she and Benward built a home base together with their dogs and kept the focus on their life, not the circus.

Reminder: Who Luke Benward is

• Actor and singer with a stack of Disney Channel credits: Charlie in Minutemen, Ryan in Girl vs. Monster, Will in Cloud 9
• Dillon on Ravenswood (the Pretty Little Liars spinoff)
• Bo in Netflix’s Dumplin'

The ugly part she had to live through

If you remember the Modern Family years, you remember the commentary — and not in a fun way. Winter went through puberty on one of TV’s biggest comedies, and grown adults made her body their talking point. Add in the over-sexualization from the media and a public family legal battle, and that is a lot for a teenager to absorb.

In a May 2024 interview with PEOPLE, she summed up how relentless it felt:

"It was just everywhere. It was every headline I read about myself, like, grown people writing articles about me saying how I looked terrible or pregnant or like a fat slut. I mean, I was 14. It totally damaged my self-esteem. I understood what it was like to be hated. No matter what I was going through, I was a target."

She also admitted it made it hard to even look in the mirror and say she loved who she was at the time. After the show ended, getting out of L.A. (or at least out of the spotlight’s blast radius) and into a calmer, domestic routine helped reset all that.

Why this relationship seems to work

They have been together since 2019 — so we are talking a solid six years of choosing each other, not just posting each other. Winter calls Benward her best friend, and that is the foundation she comes back to. In her E! News chat, she laid it out:

"There are so many things that go into a partnership, but I think what I find so important is a 'best friendship.' I feel like, if you have that foundation, you really can weather a lot of storms."

That tracks with how they operate: low-key, dog-obsessed, and not performative. No promises carved in stone, just two people doing the daily work and liking each other enough to keep doing it.