Great question! I'll break my answer down into two parts: 1. In the example with reputation, it's normally the person him/herself that's living up to their own reputation, not someone else. So something like "The restaurant didn't live up to its reputation" would probably be a more commonly used example. Also: "fulfill" is not suitable here. You fulfill your destiny, not your reputation. 2. As for to / and, the correct written usage is "try to", but in speech many, as you've noticed, substitute the "to" for an "and". I'm guessing this is because the flow of the pronunciation gets smoother, but I can't say for sure. You'll just have to accept that that's how most people talk. Interestingly, the exact same exchange happens in my native tongue Swedish, with "att" / "och" (literal translations of "to" / "and"). This in turn makes me wonder if the phenomenon has deeper roots, but I'll leave that to any linguists that might be hanging around here 😇

Thank you very much!

I try to live up to her expectation. I try and live up to her expectation. substitute reputation for expectation in this instance, because as Carl pointed out below, you don't live up to someone else's reputation.