Display Saved Database Answers in Form Issue

[eluser]dhall[/eluser]
Greetings All!
I am fairly new to CI and coding in general so bare with me.
I have created a form that has several dropdowns along with blank fields for the user to enter their profile information.
I can save their answers to the database just fine but I seem to be having an issue with pulling and displaying them once saved.
I thought using the "set_value()" would do the trick, but its not working.
Any help would be great!

Here is an example of my setup for some fields. "last_name" is a blank field while "gender" is a dropdown. This is in my Controller.

Code:

$data['last_name'] = array (
    'name' => 'last_name',
    'id' => 'last_name',
    'value' => set_value('last_name',''),
    'style' => 'width:70%'
    );
    $data['gender'] = array (
    'name' => 'gender',
    'id' => 'gender',
    'selected' => set_value('gender',''),
    'style' => 'width:70%'
    );

This is where I call my Model and pass everything to the View. The "??" is where I am having my issue. What to put here so the fields will correspond to the correct question.

Code:

//get the users already saved data
    $data['??'] = $this->profile_model->get_profile();
    
    //display the page
    $data['title'] = 'Athlete Profile';  
    $data['main_content'] = 'profile_view';
    $this->load->view('templates/template_user', $data);

This is my Model. Each question in the form is setup as it's own field in the table.

Code:

function get_profile()
  {
    $query = $this->db->where('user_id',$this->session->userdata('user_id'))
                      ->get('u_profile');
    return $query->result();
  }

This is how those 2 fields look in the View.

Code:

echo form_label('Last Name: ').br(1);
  echo form_input($last_name).br(2);
  echo form_error('last_name','<p class="error">');

  echo form_label('Gender: ').br(1);
  echo form_dropdown('gender',$gender_options,'').br(2);
  echo form_error('gender','<p class="error">');