I'm going to be devil's advocate and suggest that had Alina, with her looks and Cinderella aura, won the OGM while being American quite a few of her then countrymen would have quickly learned to want it
Oh, I don't necessarily disagree. But that is exactly it: aura, "it factor", and winning. Not just winning, and not just wow, look at all those rotations in the air, am I impressed! Now, under the present judging system, rotations in the air mean wins, so they will be impressive in that regard. But Nathan Chen should be way more popular than he is (and I think he should be way more popular with the general public than he is) if rotations and wins were all it took. (And I am NOT saying all Nathan has is rotations, so please, don't argue with something I didn't say. Not saying you did @TallyT, just being prophylactic )
National pride also appears part of the Russian ladies' appeal in Russia. I don't follow them, and I have not seen one skate from RusNats or the pro-am comp, so I am only going by what I read here. Which could of course be very dangerous That, in my experience, has not been a dominant part of any skater's appeal in the US. Sure, during the Olys, everyone does the my country my medals count, but otherwise, nobody treats or has treated figure skating like a team sport, or some kind of, wow, we're great at figure skating, good for us kind of dynamic.
I really don't know if you could ever develop that dynamic in the USA, I don't care if we had the top 20 ladies in a 15 lady comp. But the underlying premise could be completely wrong too