Lady Gaga & Fiancé Michael Polansky Dish on Romance, Engagement and Finding ‘Real Love’

Lady Gaga and her fiancé Michael Polansky are speaking out about their very private romance in Vogue's October issue!

The star tells the magazine she’s happy, gushing, “The missing piece in my life was having real love.”

Now, the couple is ready to walk down the aisle after five years together, and Vogue reveals Michael popped the question in April after a day of rock climbing.

It turns out the pair met in 2019 through Gaga’s mother, Cynthia Germanotta, who crossed paths with Polansky, a tech entrepreneur, through her Born This Way Foundation.

Gaga explained, “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?”

When she heard they would both be attending Sean Parker’s birthday party in December 2019, Gaga sought him out.

The Grammy winner recalled, “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 confessed, “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.”

Weeks later they had their first date, and from there Gaga said they “just fell in love. And then COVID hit.”

They spent the shutdown together in Malibu. She 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.”

Michael 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 revealed, “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 recognizes the pandemic was a “painful” time for so many, but said she feels “very grateful that I wasn’t alone.”

She said of her partner, “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.”

And she shared a message with her fans, “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 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.”

Michael told the magazine, “She’s someone who is happiest when she’s creating. It’s one of the qualities I love most about her. But I see her enjoying it so much more than she did when I met her back in 2019.”

Gaga, who was previously engaged to Taylor Kinney in 2015 and Christian Carino in 2018, admitted she wasn’t sure she was going to find true love.

“I kind of thought I was going to have to do this all by myself—forever. And that was really scary,” the star said. “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.”

Speaking of that big life… Lady Gaga had Michael by her side as she premiered “Joker: Folie à Deux” at the Venice Film Festival this week.

She told Vogue of her role in the film, “Harley Quinn is a character people know from the ether of pop culture. I had a different experience creating her, namely my experience with mania and chaos inside—for me, it creates a quietness. Sometimes women are labeled as these overly emotional creatures and when we are overwhelmed we are erratic or unhinged. But I wonder if when things become so broken from reality, when we get pushed too far in life, what if it makes you…quiet?”

Vogue's October 2024 issue is available on newsstands nationwide on September 24.