Ant Anstead Gushes Over Renée Zellweger on Her 53rd Birthday

04/26/2022 08:46 am EDT

Ant Anstead is showing girlfriend Renée Zellweger some love as she celebrates her 53rd birthday! The Wheeler Dealers alum took to his Instagram Story Monday to pay tribute to the Oscar-winning actress with a simple and sweet message. Sharing a black and white photo of the pair cuddled up, Anstead began, "Happy Birthday to this beautiful Lady!"

He continued on, "Ren you are PURE CLASS! I know how lucky I am." Anstead and Zellweger first met in June on the set of his Discovery+ show Celebrity IOU: Joyride and the two made their first appearance as a couple in August. In September, they made it Instagram official, and in April, Zellweger opened up to Harper's Bazaar for the magazine's April cover story about the beginnings of their romance.

The Judy actress revealed that when she met Anstead, she was mourning the loss of her longtime friend and publicist Nanci Ryder, who died of ALS in 2020 at 67. "It was around Judy," Zellweger told the magazine at the time, recalling a late night in which she was up watching Brad Pitt's episode of Property Brothers Drew and Jonathan Scott's series, Celebrity IOU, which features stars giving back to some of the people who have helped them throughout the years with a stunning home makeover.

Zellweger said she felt compelled to give back to Jerome and Jerald Cowan, the two twin brothers and nurses who cared for Ryder throughout her illness, and learned that a spin-off show titled Celebrity IOU: Joyride was in development. The show, hosted by Anstead, had the same generous concept behind it but awarded the people in the celebrity guests' lives with stunning customs cars instead of home renovations. Zellweger was all in, and when she arrived on set to film, she quickly hit things off with Anstead as well.

Asked by Harper's Bazaar if Ryder, in a way, brought the two together even after she passed, Zellweger responded, "Yeah, we do joke about that. She's always doing her best. It made me smile. It made me smile to think on this, yeah, the serendipity of it all."

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