Well, wtf...
I updated to 1.7.9 and then connected again. Still, the issue was present.
Then, about 10 minutes later I selected Independent Window in Ekos settings just to see what it did and all of the sudden GPS got a fix. What does that have to do with anything?
Granted, it could have been the update but i've never had my GPS take 10+ min to get a fix. Did changing the setting in Ekos force it to do some kind of cache reset or something?