Haven’t you heard? Lady Gaga and Michael Polansky are engaged. In Vogue’s October cover, Gaga revealed her partner of five years proposed back in April after they spent the day rock climbing. The official confirmation comes after much speculation: In late July, French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal posted a video on Tiktok of him and Gaga at the Olympics, where Gaga seemingly referred to Polansky as her fiancé. It quickly went viral.
Many of the comments came from Gaga’s fan base of Little Monsters, thrilled that it appeared she would be marrying her boyfriend of four years. However, many also came from people wondering who, exactly Polansky is, as the two have kept a remarkably low profile throughout their relationship.
Now, the world has answers, as both Gaga and Polanksy extensively opened up to Vogue's Jonathan Van Meter about their relationship in the pages of Vogue. Below, find everything we know about Michael Polansky.
Polansky is the chief executive officer of The Parker Group, a company that oversees the business and charitable interests of Napster Founder and Facebook investor Sean Parker. (Parker was played by Justin Timberlake in the critically acclaimed film about Facebook’s founding, The Social Network.)
Polansky studied applied mathematics and computer science at Harvard University, graduating in 2006. He attended the prestigious school at the same time as Mark Zuckerberg, who famously dropped out in 2004 to concentrate on building Facebook.
Polansky and Gaga’s mother, Cynthia Germanotta, met in 2019 as they both ran in the same philanthropic circles. (He does charity work with Parker’s foundation, and Germanotta runs her daughter’s Born This Way foundation.) “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?” Gaga told Vogue. A few months later, Gaga and Polansky both attended Sean Parker's birthday party in Los Angeles. Gaga sought him out, and the two ended up talking for hours. “I didn’t know much about her and honestly wasn’t sure what to expect,” Polansky says. “I was struck immediately by her warmth and openness—she was so genuinely curious about what my life was like growing up in Minnesota.”
Gaga and Polansky made their relationship public at the 2020 Super Bowl in Miami. After a weekend spent attending high-profile parties, Gaga hard launched Polansky on Instagram: “We had so much fun in Miami. Love to all my little monsters and fans, you’re the best!” Gaga wrote on Instagram, alongside a photo of her and Polansky embracing on a yacht.
Polansky and Gaga spent a year in lockdown at her house in Malibu—and it was there that they fell in love. “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,” the singer told Vogue. Polanksy added that it allowed them to have a “weird kind of normalcy.”