Lady Gaga and Michael Polansky Reveal How They Fell in Love

One day after Lady Gaga and Michael Polansky made their red carpet debut at the Venice Film Festival, Vogue ran an interview with Gaga and Polansky, where the two discussed their years-long love story and engagement in detail for the first time. Turns out, the couple initially met in 2019 through her mother, Cynthia Germanotta. Germanotta became connected to Polansky because they both work in philanthropy. In classic mom fashion, he knew all along that Polansky and her daughter could go the distance as a couple.

“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!’” Gaga recalled. “I could never have imagined that my mom…found the most perfect person for me?”

In December 2019, Gaga attended Sean Parker’s 40th birthday, knowing that Polansky is a colleague of his. “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 learned early on during that party that Gaga wanted to talk to him. “I didn’t know much about her and honestly wasn’t sure what to expect,” he said. “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 that meeting, they continued talking on the phone until they had their first date weeks later “and just fell in love. And then COVID hit,” Gaga said. They quarantined together at her Malibu house. “It was really kind of special,” the singer shared. “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 added: “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.” He said that given Gaga’s fame, the pandemic had one silver lining: “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 touched on how hard and scary COVID-19 was for everyone. “I feel very grateful that I wasn’t alone,” she said.

She then spoke more broadly about how she sees Polansky: “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.”

Gaga and Polansky got engaged in April after a day of rock climbing, Vogue revealed. After her two past engagements ended, Gaga said, “I kind of thought I was going to have to do this all by myself—forever. And that was really scary. Because it’s a big life. And I don’t think anyone really knows what it feels like unless you’re in it. And I don’t have to do this alone anymore.”

She and Polansky look forward to their future now, she shared: “Michael and I are really excited to organize our lives—and our marriage—around our creative output as a couple, which is really different than, like, doing what other people want you to do.”

Alyssa Bailey is the senior news and strategy editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage of celebrities and royals (particularly Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton). She previously held positions at InStyle and Cosmopolitan. When she’s not working, she loves running around Central Park, making people take #ootd pics of her, and exploring New York City.