Are Adele and Rich Paul Secretly Married?
Rich Paul and Adele.
Adele and her sports agent boyfriend, Rich Paul, are still going strong. In fact, they may be married. At least that's the rumor floating around the internet ever since the "Easy on Me" singer referred to Paul as her "husband" during her Sept. 16 residency concert in Las Vegas. She further fueled speculation when she called herself his "wife" at her Sept. 23 show. So what's the deal with these two?
Here’s everything to know about Adele and Rich Paul; plus, details on the Grammy winner's divorce from ex Simon Konecki and other highlights from her dating life.
Who is Adele dating?
Adele is dating Rich Paul. They kept the early days of their relationship extremely private, but Vogue reports that they've been together since the beginning of 2021, and they made their first public appearance together on July 17 of that year, at Game 5 of the NBA finals.
“I didn’t mean to go public with it. I just wanted to go to the game,” she told the magazine. “I just love being around him. I just love it.” But the couple did discuss their attendance together on the way to the game. “He was like, ‘What are people going to say?’ And I was like, ‘That you signed me. As an athlete. You’re my agent,’” Adele said. “And he was like, ‘Okay, cool.’”
From there, the couple became Instagram official on Sept. 18, when Adele posted a picture of herself with Paul at the wedding of Lakers player Anthony Davis. Her caption? A heart emoji.
Who is Rich Paul?
He may not be as famous as Adele, but Paul is fabulously successful and wealthy, working as a sports agent to top athletes in the NBA and NFL. Specifically, he's the owner of the Klutch Sports Group agency, and boasts clients such as LeBron James and Anthony Davis. According to a profile in The New Yorker, Paul has three children but has never been married.
Fans will soon get more insight into Paul's life. On Oct. 10, 2023, he's releasing a memoir about his childhood growing up in Cleveland, called Lucky Me, which will be published by Roc Lit 101, the publishing division of Jay-Z’s entertainment company Roc Nation.
“Lucky Me is the story of every young Black man who grew up like me,” Paul said in a statement announcing the book. “I want to use my story to uplift and inspire those who lived this and educate those who didn’t. I cannot tell you what it means to partner with my friend and mentor Jay-Z on this project.”
Related: Rich Paul's Net Worth In 2023 Shows He Really Is, Well, Very Rich
How did Adele meet Rich Paul?
Although they’ve been dating since early 2021, Adele told Vogue that they were friends for a while before that. “He was always there, I just didn’t see him,” she said. The pair first met on the dance floor at a party several years ago. “I was a bit drunk. I said, ‘Do you want to sign me? I’m an athlete now,’” she said. “He was dancing. All the other guys were just sitting around. He was just dancing away.”
But it was her ability to make peace with her dying father, with whom she’d had a difficult relationship, in 2021 that led her to be finally open to real love. “I think I’ve never been fully in any of my relationships,” she told Rolling Stone in November of that year. “I always had this fear from a really young age that you’re going to leave me anyway, so I’m going to leave or I’m not going to invest myself in anything.”
But after her father passed, “I’ve felt so calm ever since then. It really did set little me free,” she told Rolling Stone. It was then that adult Adele was able to reconnect with Paul. Since then, she told Rolling Stone, she’s had the most “incredible, openhearted and easiest” relationship ever.
Related: Let's Count All the Easter Eggs in (And Fan Theories About) Adele's 'Easy on Me' Music Video
Is Adele engaged to Rich Paul?
Not that we know of, although Adele did spark some rumors that she was already married when she called Paul her "husband" during her Sept. 16 residency concert in Las Vegas.
Who is Adele’s husband?
Adele fueled rumors that she's married to Rich Paul by referring to him as her "husband" during her Sept. 16 residency concert in Las Vegas. But as far as we know, she's only tied the knot once, to charity CEO Simon Konecki. The two were together from 2011 to 2019, but only married for one year (2018).
Why did Adele and Simon Konecki get divorced?
Adele and Simon Konecki separated in 2019. “I was just going through the motions and I wasn’t happy,” she told Vogue. “Neither of us did anything wrong. Neither of us hurt each other or anything like that. It was just: I want my son to see me really love, and be loved. It’s really important to me.”
The divorce was, in a way, a preemptive strike before things got inescapably bad. “It just wasn’t right for me any more. I didn’t want to end up like a lot of other people I knew,” she told British Vogue. “I wasn’t miserable miserable, but I would have been miserable had I not put myself first. But, yeah, nothing bad happened or anything like that.”
In a sit-down with Oprah Winfrey, Adele added about ending her marriage, "It was just exhausting trying to keep going with it. It's a process, the process of a divorce."
Despite the split, she’s still on good terms with Konecki; in fact, he lives across the street from her in Los Angeles. They co-parent and still do family movie nights. “He’s not one of my exes. He’s the dad of my child,” she told Vogue; likewise, she told British Vogue, “I’d trust him with my life…I definitely chose the perfect person to have my child with."
Who is Adele’s son?
Adele’s son with Konecki is 10-year-old Angelo, whose birth she credits with keeping her grounded and away from tortured artist territory. “Sometimes I get frightened by the idea of where my life would have gone had I not gotten pregnant with Angelo,” she told Vogue. “They both saved me. There was a real reason why Simon came into my life.”
The divorce was, understandably, very hard for Angelo. “He has so many simple questions for me that I can’t answer, because I don’t know the answer,” Adele told Vogue. "Like, ‘Why can’t we still live together?’ ‘That’s just not what people do when they get divorced.’ ‘But why not?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t f---ing know. That’s not what society does.’ And, ‘Why don’t you love my dad anymore? ‘And I’d be like, I’ do love your dad. I’m just not in love.’ I can’t make that make sense to a 9-year-old.”
What is Adele’s album 30 about?
Not surprisingly, 30 is Adele’s divorce album, which she made largely for her son. “I just felt like I wanted to explain to him, through this record, when he’s in his twenties or thirties, who I am and why I voluntarily chose to dismantle his entire life in the pursuit of my own happiness,” she told British Vogue. “It made him really unhappy sometimes. And that’s a real wound for me that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to heal.”
Instead of angry breakup songs blaming her exes, however, “It was more me divorcing myself,” she laughed to Vogue. “I realized that I was the problem. Cause all the other albums are like, ‘You did this! You did that! F--k you! Why can’t you arrive for me?’ Then I was like, ‘Oh, s--t, I’m the running theme, actually. Maybe it’s me!'"
The inward-looking tracks explore how, through the breakup, she learned more about who she really is. “I feel like this album is self-destruction, then self-reflection and then sort of self-redemption,” she told British Vogue. “But I feel ready. I really want people to hear my side of the story this time.”
Who is Adele’s song 'Easy on Me' about?
Adele wrote 30's first single, “Easy on Me,” about her split from Konecki, with the song initially coming to her when she “was singing a cappella in the shower” back in 2018, she told British Vogue. “It’s like, I left the marriage. Be kind to me as well. It was the first song I wrote for the album and then I didn’t write anything else for six months after because I was like, ‘OK, well, I’ve said it all.”
She revealed a bit more about the song’s meaning to Hits Radio Breakfast. “If you're the one that's sort of initiating the [breakup] discussion, it's sort of like hang on a minute, go easy on me, you know, it's not my fault,” she said. “So it's just sort of really about that, in the way that, you know, the decision that I made really.”
Easy On Me - Out Nowhttps://t.co/2iwZqeT01P pic.twitter.com/UhmznLDvgZ
— Adele (@Adele) October 14, 2021
Did Adele date Skepta?
In mid-2020, rumors surfaced that Adele was dating British rapper Skepta after some seemingly flirty Instagram messages. But when she appeared on Saturday Night Live in October 2020, she make a point of noting that she was single. After the show, she wrote on Instagram, “I’m going back to my cave now to be the (single) cat lady that I am!”
Adele did delve into her post-divorce dating life on the 30 tracks “Can I Get It, “All Night Parking,” “Woman Like Me” and “Oh My God.” Although there was some speculation that some of the songs were about Skepta, Rolling Stone points out that Adele had finished the album before the Skepta rumors started. That said, Adele had known Skepta for a long time before that, posting a photo of him Instagram captioned “Tottenham boy” and a heart emoji way back in 2016 (both artists are from Tottenham in London).
At the very least, 30’s dating songs are about somebody that Adele was involved with after Konecki and before Paul. “[It] was a great learning curve and nice to feel loved, but it was never going to work,” she told Rolling Stone about the mystery relationship, in part because it was long-distance.
She also admits she found the dating process difficult before she met Paul. “I lasted five seconds [dating in Los Angeles],” she told Rolling Stone. Plus, “you can’t set me up on a f---ing blind date! I’m like, ‘How’s that going to work?’ There’ll be paparazzi outside and someone will call [gossip site] Deuxmoi, or whatever it’s f---ing called! It ain’t happening.”
Did Adele date Stormzy?
Adele has also been friends with British rapper Stormzy for years. His 2017 song “Big for Your Boots” even has a line referencing Adele—“You’re never too big for Adele”—and he captioned a pic of her backstage at one of his shows that year, “best day ever.”
But there doesn’t seem to be much to back up the idea that they ever dated. “99.9 percent of the stories that have been written about me are absolutely made up,” she told Vogue about romance rumors.
No matter who she dated previously, we’re glad that Adele has found happiness in her private life with Paul to match her amazing musical success.
