Lady Gaga may have had the best Valentine’s Day ever: She got engaged to Taylor Kinney, the biggest “Little Monster” of all. Kinney proposed to Gaga on Saturday with a giant, heart-shaped diamond ring. Gaga wrote on Instagram: “He gave me his heart on Valentine’s Day and I said YES!” Gaga and Kinney met on the set of her music video, “You & I,” in 2011 – the prescient video showed Gaga wearing her mother’s wedding dress. The two started dating a few months after they met, and aside from a monthlong breakup in 2012, have gone strong every since. But who is Gaga’s hunky heartthrob? Get to know Gaga’s leading man with these five facts.
1. He is most well-known for his role as Lieutenant Kelly Severide in “Chicago Fire.” Kinney has appeared on shows like “The Vampire Diaries” and “Shameless,” but he is most famous for his starring role on “Chicago Fire,” a NBC drama about close-knit firefighters who cope with loss and heartbreak on the job.
2. He’s not starstruck by Lady Gaga: When “Today Show” host Hoda Kotb asked Kinney what it’s like to date an icon like Gaga, he responded, “I don’t know because I don’t have that outside view. I guess it’s normal.” Gaga confirmed this when she told the Times,“I think what has made me so happy with Taylor is that he fiercely loves me from the inside out. And he is completely blind to the way that I dress, my changes, my creative process as it is — he knows me as the Italian-American girl my mother and father gave birth to.”
3. He’s down-to-earth: Kinney is from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, though he studied business management at West Virginia University. Kinney still returns to Lancaster, sometimes with Gaga, where he says he enjoys waking up at 6 a.m. and taking Sunday morning drives. He told Glamour of taking Gaga to Lancaster, ” We’ll hike together. I’m always giving her flak, like, ‘Babe, you can’t wear your heels when we’re hiking.'”
4. He loves his fans: Kinney frequently tweets back to his fans, and even promised to be one fan’s Valentine after she wrote to him that she got dumped. Just don’t tell Gaga.
5. He allegedly held a “commitment ceremony” with Lady Gaga: Kinney and Gaga allegedly held a small “commitment ceremony” for close friends and family last fall because they did not have time for an official wedding. Kinney was spotted wearing a ring on his ring finger after the ceremony, according to MTV.
