It’s the documentary everyone is talking about – since Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies and Scandal hit Netflix, it’s quickly climbed to the top of the streaming service’s top 10 most watched shows.
The three-part doc follows the true story behind the controversial dating site, which helped facilitate affairs for married people.
While the series shows how Ashley Madison courted the controversy that followed in its wake, it also details the widespread 2015 hack, which saw data of the site’s 30 million users leaked onto the dark web. Details such as credit card payments, email addresses and even sexual preferences suddenly became widely available for the world to see. It had life-changing consequences for millions of couples, and was deeply embarrassing for the Ashley Madison website, which previously boasted discretion and privacy.
Alongside interviews from the then-senior executives at Ashley Madison during the leak, the documentary series also features Sam and Nia Rader, a pair of Christian vloggers who shot to fame after videos of them lip-syncing in their car went viral on YouTube. The couple went on to share snippets of what appeared to be their idyllic family life. However, things became tense for the pair after Sam’s name was featured on the Ashley Madison data leak.
As the couple explain their story, you may be wondering whether Sam and Nina managed to navigate their way through this turbulent time and if they’re still together. Well, Cosmopolitan UK has the answers.
Are Sam and Nia still together?
To outsiders, their relationship was perfect. Sam wanted that all-encompassing, head-over-heels love, having been inspired by Ewan McGregor’s performance in 2003 film, Big Fish.
Nia was that person for Sam, with the pair getting married when they were young (20 and 24, respectively), and with Nia describing their wedding day as magical. In the documentary, Nia recalls seeing Sam burst into tears as she walked down the aisle. “I just thought, ‘he really loves me,’” she tells the camera.
However, as Sam explains in the documentary, when the pair had children, he felt things become monotonous and routine. He decided to join Ashley Madison when he was on night shift at his job as a nurse, looking for excitement outside his marriage. For anonymity, Sam used the username 'dirty_little_secret_man'.
A few years later, however, the Texas-based couple had their lives changed when a silly video of the pair lip-syncing to a song from Disney’s Frozen in their car kickstarted their vlogging career in 2014.
A year on from that, their YouTube audience grew massively after Sam made a video using his wife’s urine to test whether she was pregnant before she even had a chance to realise herself. That YouTube snippet allowed Sam to quit his job and concentrate on their channel, Sam and Nia, full-time.
It during at this time, Sam says he deleted his Ashley Madison account.
What did Sam Rader do on Ashley Madison?
Sadly, Sam and Nia's happiness was short-lived. In the summer of 2015, a hacking team known as The Impact Group threatened to leak the details of all the users on Ashley Madison unless the website was shut down in 30 days. When CEO Noel Biderman did not acquiesce to the threats, The Impact Group published the personal details of over 30 million Ashley Madison users on the dark web. They also published Biderman’s personal emails, which exposed years of alleged affairs (going against his 'family man' image), as well as how insecure Ashley Madison’s servers were.
Sam was at an airport heading to a vlogging conference with Nia when news of the leak emerged. He realised he was named after checking X (then known as Twitter), and decided he had to tell her.
At this time, Sam stressed that he had never met up with anyone on Ashley Madison, but had sent messages to numerous women on the site.
“When I signed up for Ashley Madison I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life,” Sam says in the documentary.
At the time, Nia decided to support Sam, with the pair releasing an apology video on YouTube to their subscribers.
“I have sought forgiveness from God and He has forgiven me, so I have been completely cleansed of this sin,” he said in the video.
Did Sam and Nia break up?
Heartbreakingly for Nia, Sam hadn’t been completely honest in his confession. After the conference, Sam revealed to Nia that he had been unfaithful. As well as visiting massage parlours and strip clubs, Sam had flirted with and tried to engage in extramarital affairs with the couple’s acquaintances – even with some of Nia’s best friends.
Nia, unsurprisingly, felt like their marriage was no longer viable. Speaking in the documentary, she says she wanted to “avoid” men like Sam, adding she wanted a good Christian relationship.
The pair, however, decided to go for marriage counselling with their local pastor, which helped them rebuild their relationship.
“I started to think of the selfish decisions I made,” Sam explains in the documentary. “It was all about me, I wasn’t thinking about Nia. I hoped she could see this was not a confessional, it was a repentance, a complete change.”
The pair are still together and continue to create content for YouTube, where they have 2.5 million subscribers. They now share four children together.
“Continuing to be deeply in love takes work,” Nia explains.
Elsewhere, Sam says he doesn’t “regret” that the hack happened, as it lead to him becoming the man he is today.
He is less complimentary about Ashley Madison, however, which continues to operate under new leaders.
“It’s evil on a whole different level,” he says.
Ashley Madison: Sex, Lies and Scandal is available to watch on Netflix
Kimberley Bond
Features Writer
Kimberley Bond is a Features Writer at Cosmopolitan. After gaining her MA in Magazine Journalism from the University of Sheffield in 2016, Kimberley first started her career as a showbiz and culture writer, where she interviewed A-Listers (and Z-Listers) on red carpets, at awards ceremonies and at parties.
After the pandemic put a hold on the showbiz circuit, Kimberley turned to features and has written for a number of publications including The Independent, The Telegraph, Evening Standard, Stylist and Glamour amongst countless others.
She’s still a complete celebrity gossip hound, and when she’s not scrolling through the sidebar of shame you can find her on X, LinkedIn or in the gym where’s trying and failing to get an arse like JLo.
