The Challenge alum Anika Rashaun has died. She was 34.
“Happy birthday in heaven Anika🎂💛 Today I celebrate you on your 35th birthday,” Rashuan’s friend Cyndi Rich wrote via Facebook on Thursday, October 22, revealing the reality TV alum died earlier this month. “You transitioned on October 1 and I know that meant something to you as a girl who always loved her birthday month.”
She continued, “Anika lived her years fully with a stacked calendar, juggling all her dreams, invites from friends and always showing up. Anika was meeting everyone she could, traveling (but also living) across the world, taking on jobs (often multiple at once), and never settling for anything less than she deserved. I miss the four-hour (not exaggerating) phone calls, her amazing advice in every situation and planning our weddings together.”
Rich met Rashaun, who appeared on 2016’s The Real World: Bad Blood and The Challenge: Invasion of the Champions the next year, as collegiate sorority sisters.
Hollywood mourned the deaths of some of its most legendary stars in 2026. In June, legendary music executive Clive Davis also died at age 94 following a hospitalization for an upper respiratory infection. In August, news broke that The Sopranos alum Vincent Pastore and former The Challenge winner Tyler Duckworth died. Dolly Parton also passed […]
“It breaks my heart that Anika’s journey ended the way it did. She deserves so much more,” Rich said. “When I’m mad for her I try to hold on to all she did have and treasured most. Her loving and devoted parents and brother, the absolute best friend and sister a girl could ask for in Tiara, and knowing that she found true love with the most incredible man — marrying her and staying by her side through it all, Kyle.”
Rich concluded, “Anika shined so bright. Being close to that light as one of her closest friends was a true blessing. She is a vibrant soul. I’ll love her and treasure the 16 years of memories forever. Until we meet again.”
Rashuan is survived by her parents, her brother and her husband, Kyle Walker-Rehn, whom she married in February. A cause of death has not been publicly shared.
In the years since her reality TV experience, Rashaun worked as a dating coach and matchmaker. In her personal life, she was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer in summer 2025.
“Her diagnosis was a shock,” Rashuan’s friend Tiara Ramos wrote in a Substack essay. “Despite her mother having breast cancer years earlier, she was never identified as high-risk or told by her doctors to prioritize mammograms. That was one of the many failures she experienced within the medical system during her time battling cancer.”
Without further detailing Rashaun’s diagnosis, Ramos offered her condolences to her family.
“My world already feels dulled and blurred without her. The urge to pick up the phone and FaceTime her is a reflex I can’t shake,” Ramos penned. “Knowing the pain her husband, her parents, her loved ones, and her community are feeling right now makes me sick. I am angry. I am heartbroken. I am devastated.”
