LOS ANGELES — Miley Cyrus has confirmed that she dated Dylan Sprouse during their Disney Channel years, revealing in the Hannah Montana 20th Anniversary Special that the longtime rumor was real. The admission instantly turned one of the sweetest bits of mid-2000s Disney gossip into official pop-culture canon, March 24, 2026.
The biggest takeaway is how casually Cyrus said it. In her conversation with Alex Cooper, summarized by E! News, Cyrus said Dylan was her boyfriend and called him the cutest, adding a funny memory about sushi outings with Dylan, Cole Sprouse and their dad.
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The timing is doing a lot of the work. As Disney’s official anniversary special page notes, the new special revisits the Hannah Montana phenomenon with archival footage, guest appearances, behind-the-scenes stories and music, which means fans are already in full memory-lane mode. A small, charming reveal like this lands bigger when it arrives inside a reunion built around nostalgia.
It also fits the broader tone of the comeback event. In an Associated Press report from the Los Angeles premiere, Cyrus framed the special as a celebration rather than a simple look back, while the story highlighted appearances from Billy Ray Cyrus, Selena Gomez and Chappell Roan. That makes the Dylan confession feel less like tabloid bait and more like one more candid memory from a huge Disney era.
Disney-era rumors finally got a clean answer
What gives the moment extra staying power is that it connects neatly to the old timeline fans have been piecing together for years. Vanity Fair’s 2008 Miley Cyrus profile captured just how massive Hannah Montana already was at the time, describing a teen star carrying one of Disney Channel’s defining franchises while still trying to look and sound like a regular kid.
And Dylan’s old joke about Nick Jonas suddenly makes more sense in hindsight. In People’s August 2008 report on her Nick Jonas romance, Cyrus said she and Jonas had been “in love,” which helps explain why that relationship became such a defining reference point in Disney gossip from the period. Now that Cyrus herself has confirmed Dylan came first, the story feels less like fan lore and more like a funny, harmless chapter from the network’s most interconnected teen-star universe.
That is probably why the reveal is resonating so widely. It is not scandalous, messy or revisionist. It is simply Miley Cyrus, 20 years after Hannah Montana debuted, turning a whispered Disney memory into a confirmed one — and reminding fans how small, weird and unexpectedly sweet that whole era could be.
