At the Olympics in July, Lady Gaga seemed to let it slip that she was engaged to Michael Polansky. Now, she has publicly confirmed it.
A new Vogue profile on Gaga notes she and Polansky “got engaged in April after a day of rock climbing.”
Gaga also revealed how she and Polansky met: “My mom met him and she said to me, ‘I think I just met your husband,’ and I said, ‘I’m not ready to meet my husband!’ I could never have imagined that my mom… found the most perfect person for me?”
She went on to speak about the 40th birthday party of Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and founding president of Facebook, with whom Polanksy is friends. She said, “I got invited and I said, ‘I wonder if Michael is going to be there,’ and my mom said yes, and so I went to the party and I kept asking for him, and he finally came over to me and we talked for three hours. We had the most amazing conversation.”
Polansky shared his perspective, saying, “I didn’t know much about her and honestly wasn’t sure what to expect. I was struck immediately by her warmth and openness — she was so genuinely curious about what my life was like growing up in Minnesota.”
After talking on the phone and going on dates, the two ended up living together during the COVID-19 pandemic. Gaga said:
“It was really kind of special. I’d been so focused on my career since I was a teenager. And the gift of that time was that I got to completely focus on my relationship. I met this totally supportive, loving human being who wanted to get to know me — outside of Lady Gaga.”
Polansky said, “We had this amazing chapter of a weird kind of normalcy that’s essential for any relationship to develop in a real way — taking walks, making coffee, hanging out with the dogs, reading books together… The pandemic was easier on her than you might think. She’s used to being isolated because of her fame and was able to take so much of it in stride. I think she loved the chance to slow down. She’s been operating at an unfathomable level of intensity for years and it’s no secret it had caught up to her.”
Gaga also said:
“I feel very grateful that I wasn’t alone. I had never met anyone like Michael. He’s so smart and so kind. And his life and my life are very different. He’s a very private guy and he’s not with me for any other reason than that we are right for each other. But I think what I want my fans to know is that I’m just, like, so happy. I’m healthy. I feel like the last time they heard from me — in this way — was Chromatica, and that album was about an absolutely horrible time for me with my mental health. I was in a really dark place. I struggled for, like, many years before that. But everything started to change. Because I had a real friend who saw the ways in which I was unhappy and why. And he wasn’t afraid to truly hold my hand. And get to know me. On a very deep level.”
Read the full feature here.