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Untangling the Relationship Status of Kelsea Ballerini and Chase Stokes
Kelsea Ballerini, can you tell us your relationship status and are you keeping it a secret?
Although the 32-year-old might not be bringing Chase Stokes as her date to the 2025 CMA Awards on Nov. 19, it seems like she still has his heart. A representative for the Female Vocalist of the Year nominee—who is in a competition with Miranda Lambert, Ella Langley, Megan Moroney, and Lainey Wilson—confirmed to E! News in September that she and the Outer Banks star had ended their close to three years relationship, however, their connection doesn’t look like they have parted.
While Kelsea went to see the shooting of the fifth and final season of the show in Dubrovnik, Croatia with Chase, she seemed completely committed, a fan-shared video showing her dancing to ABBA’s “Dancing Queen.” She has also been seen FaceTiming the 33-year-old at Kentucky’s Keeneland race track and liking his Instagram posts, thereby indicating that Stokes is not just any guy.
Stokes Chase is Out of the Blue
Kelsea Ballerini’s new chapter looks like it has been clearly Stokes Chase’s business. In the moment when the artist Mick TikTok to Nov. 6 her new EP Mount Pleasant “People Pleaser” fans to the comment section flooded their theory another track “Emerald City” meant Kelsea to compete with M Adelyn Cline to side by side Stokes co-star and ex. Chase came to the rescue and replied to the comment “These comments are f–king weird. Grow up.”
He didn’t hesitate to say that he cared for Ballerini when it was really the case during their love life that lasted almost three years. After her five-year marriage to fellow country singer Morgan Evans ended in 2022, Kelsea—who hadn’t been on a first date since she was 22—decided to shoot her shot with the actor, thus giving birth to a very public, very modern love story that might not be entirely finished yet.
How Kelsea Ballerini Dropped a DM to Chase Stokes and Wrote a New Story
It read “hiii chase stokes,” Kelsea Ballerini addressed her very first direct message to the Outer Banks actor, shortly after 1 a.m. Dec. 1, 2022. A couple of hours later, he reacted—and that’s how it went, as she later lyrically told in 2023’s “How Do I Do This,” with her fellow Virgo, she was back at the beginning again.”
On her Call Her Daddy podcast episode in February 2023, the six-time Grammy Award nominee remarked, “In fact, he’s filming in Charleston and my manager lives there. He kind of put the idea into my head.” “He was like, ‘You know who’s really cute – when you’re ready? Chase.’ And I was like, ‘You are absolutely right.'”
While she hadn’t watched the series, she “just knew of him” quite simply: “I followed him, he followed me and I just absolutely dived right in.”
How Kelsea Ballerini and Chase Stokes’ First Kiss and Romance Looked Like a Movie
As if it were a film from a romantic comedy, their first kiss was.
“He came out of his Bronco really fast,” Kelsea Ballerini on Call Her Daddy in Nov. 2023, remembered, “and he didn’t say a word to me, he just took my face and kissed me and then he brought my face aside and he said, ‘Thank God you’re real.’”
After that, the duo quickly filled their scrapbook with the memories: the College Football National Championship they attended together in January 2023, their red carpet debut at the CMT Music Awards 2023 in April, and a trip to her hometown of Knoxville, Tenn. in May—enough songs for an album of love.
“He is the one person with the highest emotional intelligence I’ve ever come across in my life,” she complimented him and then said that she herself constantly tells him that “He’s a man created by a woman.”
How Kelsea Ballerini Turned Her Romance With Chase Stokes Into Love Songs
Kelsea Ballerini was shortly after literally telling their love story in a writing manner.
“First Rodeo” is the first love song I wrote for Chase,” she said in a Today episode in October 2024 while promoting her fifth studio album PATTERNS. “It’s actually the first song where it’s kind of like, ‘Okay, I feel a little fragile, I feel a little scared to open myself up to the capacity that I want to, but nonetheless, I love love, and I really love you.’”
At the same month and album listening party, she confessed, “I would argue that this is the most love-filled record I’ve ever made. I think the presence of love in every song is at the forefront.”
Moreover, if anyone thinks that they are revealing too much, Chase can share his own insight. “Sometimes it feels like maybe it’s an oversharing situation,” he told E! News in 2024, “but I truthfully believe that my personal life is really, really private.”
How Kelsea Ballerini and Chase Stokes Managed Their Relationship When Apart
On social media, Kelsea Ballerini and Chase Stokes present to the world what most couples do not see, the best moments of their relationship. “We’ve been really lucky in this recent chapter,” Chase said to E! News while explaining that When she is in Nashville recording and he is on the set, “we haven’t been able to overlap our busy seasons.”
However, they also established their own silent rituals off the camera. “We have done FaceTime date nights,” he recounted, “during which we select a cuisine and then come up with, ‘Do we want to drink red wine tonight? Do we want to have a white wine or just drinking water?’”
According to his statement, “there were times when we could not see each other and we turned that situation into an opportunity to do beautiful things.”
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Kelsea Ballerini on a Future With Chase Stokes
Kelsea Ballerini is not ruling out a future with her for a long time.
“I would never say never to anything,” she said to E! News’ Keltie Knight in October 2024. “Any thing that I have said no to very firmly in my life, I have come back and I have challenged myself.”
Moreover, she mentioned that Chase Stokes is “such a major factor not only of this album but also of my life. I think it was a lovely way to pay tribute to him and to us.”
