Kordell Beckham knew he had messed up before Serena Page approached him at the dock in Fiji. Soon after, the rest of the cast of Love Island USA would too, when Page ripped him into in front of everyone for kissing and dry humping another woman outside of the show’s prescribed “challenges,” even though he said he wouldn’t do that.
It couldn’t have come at a worse time. For weeks, Beckham had worked with Page to help her let down her defenses and trust him. Now the walls were back up, and for good reason. Page made him pay for it. She stopped doing his hair, a staple of their relationship. She refused to eat any breakfast he made her. Instead, she spilled it on him from her plate. On the rare occasions she did speak to him, it wasn’t friendly. Beckham took all of it in his stride. He apologized profusely. If she had a question, he answered it. When she mockingly told him to “get his girlfriend,” he followed her, not the other woman.
“The Casa Situation,” as it is now commonly known, was the moment America fell in love with the 22-year-old Dallas resident. Page and Beckham secured their spot in the season finale and ultimately emerged as winners after winning a nationwide vote, crowning the most-watched season in Love Island USA six-year story. Beckham went home with $50,000 and a new girlfriend.
And yes, his godmother, Karen Alford, the gentle, caring type America met on the hottest show of the summer, is the same off-screen, too. From the beginning. She remembers Kordell as the boy who burned CDs of her favorite love songs for her when she was going through a rough time. The first-grader who, when he had a crush on his teacher, insisted on getting her a Valentine’s Day gift. He wrote a sweet note; Alford did his part by buying something at Target. She still remembers how much it hurt him when she asked him that night how the teacher liked his gift.
“The teacher’s husband brought cupcakes to the kids and flowers to his wife and he just couldn’t believe it,” Alford says. “He cried all night… he couldn’t believe she had another man!”
So it was no surprise to her that he threw himself into his new relationship. That’s Kordell. And as important as his new relationship and the prize money are, Beckham’s biggest Love Island USA The greatest victory for everyone was that he was able to make a name for himself by being himself.
“We always talked about him going out and doing his thing, and that it wasn’t about his brother,” says his best friend Jay-Ron Tanner. “It was just fate. He has too strong a personality for him not to be in the world.”
Beckham’s brother is Odell Beckham Jr., the three-time NFL Pro Bowl wide receiver. Kordell was in middle school when Odell Jr.’s popularity was at its peak, when he played for the New York Giants and made one of the most memorable catches in football history. Even though they lived 1,500 miles apart, it was hard to be in OBJ’s shadow. Kordell was wary of new friendships. Did his peers really care about him, or did they just want to get closer to the brother of an NFL superstar?
When Odell Jr. came to town and surprised him by picking him up from school, the joy of seeing his big brother again was quickly overshadowed by Odell Jr.’s fame. He never forgot how his classmates harassed his brother, just as he never forgot the outside pressure he felt on the football field to match or surpass Odell Jr.’s level.
“Kordell brought something different, but no one could really tell because everyone was too busy comparing the two,” Alford says.
After high school, the comparisons died down. Unlike Odell Jr., Kordell knew football wasn’t his future. In August 2020, he enrolled at Tyler Junior College to study business, but after about a year, he started thinking about modeling and acting. A friend of a friend of Alford’s worked at VLF Media and Promotions, a Dallas-based marketing, public relations and talent management firm. She reached out and they signed him.
He drove back and forth between Houston and Dallas for modeling jobs, eventually moving all the way up north to enroll at UNT in 2023. He studied theater and took acting classes on the side. Beckham learned to deliver monologues and take criticism from professors and fellow students. He walked in fashion shows for the first time. He didn’t feel judged like he did on the football field, just encouraged.
“What I learned in Dallas is that you’re all very helpful, and I like that,” he says. “That’s probably the only reason I stayed in Dallas.”
That doesn’t mean it was easy, though. To make ends meet, he always had one or two odd jobs: at a chicken farm (don’t ask him about it—he couldn’t look at chickens for a while afterward), at a car dealership, at UPS, and most recently as a marshal and refueler of airplanes at DFW International Airport.
His big breakthrough could have come sooner. Love Island USA Producers had first reached out in 2021, when he was just 19. Alford forbade it. Kordell had just started finding his feet in Dallas, and she felt he was too young for a daring national television show. When they met a second time, she felt the time was right for him to make his own decision. He took the plunge, and now nothing will be the same.
“I thought to myself, because I like to work: ‘What if I go to (Love Island USA)?’ and then I realized I probably can’t do that,” Beckham says before describing the scene. “Imagine me in the vest, fueling the plane, and everyone’s like, ‘Hey, is that Kordell?'”
Now he’s back in Dallas with his new definition of the “real world.” It’s been an adjustment, getting used to the outside world again and not having to abide by the show’s rule of shouting “I got a text!” every time he gets a notification on his phone. I was the one who broke the news to him that the Mavericks lost the NBA Finals to the Boston Celtics. He’s making up for lost time with his orange cat, Milo, and his two younger siblings who live nearby. They were one of the reasons he moved to Dallas, to be present in their lives rather than the brother they only saw on occasional visits from Houston.
“I just want to do the same thing my brothers did for me,” he says of his older siblings. “They were always there, teaching me new things and just being there. My brothers taught me everything. I wanted to do the same with my little brother and sister.”
When I asked him about his future plans, he answered me like Page did on the show: a sponsorship with Cheez-It crackers (he really loves Cheez-It) and “trying to get into my little influencer era,” Beckham said. He would also be more than willing to take part in reality TV shows like Extinction or American Ninja Warrior.
But his time on dating shows is over. He says he’s focused on encouraging Page and strengthening their relationship.
“She deserves it,” Beckham said. “I want her to grow beyond what she is now. And I want to be in the same boat – but most of all her.”
He plans to move to Los Angeles so they can be together. But Serena Page’s boyfriend is still Kordell Beckham first and foremost. He may be her husband. But he finally belongs to him.
