Ariana Grande and boyfriend Ethan Slater are dipping a toe into the water of becoming a more public facing couple, as evidenced by their outing this weekend. The couple attended the Stanley Cup Final in Florida in what E! News calls “a rare public appearance” for the duo, who began their relationship last year as both were very publicly exiting their respective marriages.
On the heels of the release of her latest music video for her single “The Boy Is Mine” (which many believe to be about Slater himself), Grande and Slater attended Game One of the 2024 Stanley Cup Final in Sunrise, Florida on Saturday, which saw the Florida Panthers square off against the Edmonton Oilers. “This marked one of the most public joint outings for the couple, who began their romance in 2023 after meeting early that year on the set of the upcoming two-part Wicked film, in which they play Glinda and the Munchkin Boq, respectively,” E! News reports.
News broke last July that Grande and Slater were dating just days after the public learned that Grande was divorcing her husband, Dalton Gomez, after less than two years of marriage. Slater filed for divorce from his wife, Lilly Jay (with whom he shares a young son) later that month, though both Grande and Slater are adamant that their relationship with one another began only after each of them was separated from their respective spouses.
The pair have been spotted on a few date nights in New York City, but have mostly kept a low profile considering the way in which the public learned that they were dating (and the ample controversy that followed). “We selectively remember that this is what the tabloids do to people, especially women, based on whether or not we like the person,” Grande said in a February episode of The Zach Sang Show. “We selectively leave space for humanness, for nuance. Like, they don’t leave space for that—well, they do for their friends and family. It’s selective. But they turn it off when that aligns with the version of a person that they have in their head that they want to believe is true.” She continued that “there’s an insatiable frustration, inexplicable, hellish feeling with watching people misunderstand the people you love, and you, and anything.”
As Grande and Slater begin to go more public with their outings, her brother, Frankie Grande, said recently that he is a fan of her boyfriend: “I love him,” Frankie said earlier this month. “He’s a very sweet guy.”
Frankie said he’d been a “big fan” of Slater’s ever since seeing him in The SpongeBob Musical, which ran from 2017 to 2018. “All I want is for my sister to be happy,” he said. “When she’s happy, I’m happy. So, I’m very happy.”
At Saturday’s hockey game, Grande and Slater both wore Florida Panthers jerseys and watched their team beat the Edmonton Oilers 3-0; Grande, for her part, accessorized with cat ears. Of their connection “They’re a little dorky and [both] theater geeks at heart,” a source told Us Weekly last November. “Their relationship is blossoming. It’s effortless with zero drama.”
Meanwhile, as Grande went increasingly more public with Slater, her ex-husband, Gomez, went public with a new love of his own: the real estate broker went social media official over the weekend with actress Maika Monroe, via a photo carousel shared by Monroe on Instagram.
