When news of Hailee Steinfeld and Josh Allen’s engagement broke over the weekend, my fantasy-football group chat was full of people saying, “I didn’t even know they were together.” The actress has been dating the Buffalo Bills quarterback since last May, but the pair have managed to stay relatively low-key about their relationship. (It probably helps that there’s another celebrity–NFL player pair that takes up most of the spotlight.) That doesn’t mean we don’t know anything about the couple, though. Let’s start at the beginning.
Steinfeld and Allen hung out in New York
The couple were first spotted hanging out in May 2023 shortly after there were reports that Allen and his longtime girlfriend Brittany Williams had broken up. Over the course of a couple days in New York, he and Steinfeld were seen walking around, getting sushi, and riding an escalator. That’s amore.
At the time, a source told People that the two had been “hanging out for a few weeks” and enjoying themselves. “It’s new, but they are having fun,” the source said. We don’t know how the two met, but I think the safe money would be on Raya.
Allen talked about their relationship for the first time
In August 2023, Allen went on the Pardon My Take podcast and addressed the tabloid interest in his relationship. “The fact that anybody cares about that still blows my mind,” he said. This was before Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce began publicly dating, so it’s fair that he didn’t realize people would go nuts for one of the best players in the NFL dating a beautiful celebrity.
She hung out with his mom
When the NFL season began, Steinfeld took her WAG duties seriously. She was photographed at a store that sells Bills gear alongside Allen’s mom.
Things were getting “serious”
Once the NFL season was over, Allen was free to hang out with his girlfriend. The couple were spotted driving around Orange County in late January of this year. A month afterward, a source told People that Allen and Steinfeld were in a “serious relationship.”
“They always planned to spend more time together after his season ended. Things have been going really well,” the source told the tabloid. “They’re both very family-oriented and driven, and they want to protect their relationship and keep it private. They’ve been on the same page with all of that.”
They went to Paris (and sort of hard-launched)
In April, Steinfeld posted a series of photos to Instagram of her on a balcony overlooking Paris. This seemed unrelated to her relationship until three months later.
That July, Allen revealed that he too had been in Paris when he posted the back of Steinfeld’s head to his Instagram grid. What a twist! I think this is technically a hard launch, even though her face isn’t in the photo.
Steinfeld blogged about her man
Did you know that Steinfeld has a newsletter called Beau Society? Well, she does, and in October she shared an anecdote about how she and Allen bought each other the exact same knife for Christmas. This is the first time Steinfeld ever really addressed the fact that she was dating Allen.
“I got this knife for Josh last year for Christmas because cooking is something we love to do together. For Christmas he got me…the same one in a different colorway,” Steinfeld wrote. “After we exchanged our knives lol, he told me there’s an old wive’s tale that if you gift your significant other a knife you have to pay for it, otherwise it signifies the severing of a relationship. So we exchanged quarters so we didn’t have that bad omen.”
He finally made it to her grid
For Halloween 2024, Steinfeld and Allen hosted a circus-themed party where they both dressed up as ringleaders. This was what finally earned him a spot on her Instagram, which you really have to respect.
They got engaged!
In November, Allen and Steinfeld shared the news of their engagement via Instagram. He appeared to go all out for the occasion, which happened during a Bills bye week. In the photo, he’s getting down on one knee in front of a stunning view of the ocean, surrounded by flowers and … jars of sand? Maybe they’re candles? Whatever they are, I’m sure she loved it.
When asked by reporters how his bye week was, Allen kept things private, saying, “Fantastic. It was great. Got some sun. Hung out with family. It was fantastic.”
