@Am3thy5t_Plays_ There's two things I can think of being the possible reason for this issue:
1) The player base has been dwindling, so there's not enough players on those servers playing the game to form a match.
2) The time of day, as playing when it would be the morning for a server's region, would mean there's less players online, (unless its the weekend as there should be more players off work and out of school).
For example, if I connect to the Japan data center, I would have slow que times, (or no one in the que), from around 5pm-12am CST, as I'm in the North America region. If I wish to play with players from this region, I would have to que up during the morning. I've noticed that around 3am-10am CST, there's players in the que on Japan's servers.
What you and your girlfriend might also be experiencing is a mix of both issues. There's not that many playing on your data center early in the morning, and the ones you've tried playing on was also early in the morning, (or at a time when most of the population would be at work or school). With there being fewer players, it would make sense not having anyone in the que on a busy day.
While yes, other games do also exist and are stealing a lot of the spotlight from Apex. Games such as Fortnite has a lot going on right now and Sea of Thieves had dropped a new season with a ton of cool and fun changes.
I enjoy playing Apex too, and I hope that EA/Respawn can find balance to where players would return and enjoy the game again. I don't want this to end like how Titanfall did.