Actress Rashida Jones and musician Ezra Koenig have been quietly dating for almost a decade and even share a child together. While they live very public lives in their industries, they share very little about their private relationship. Here’s what we do know about them and their life together over the years.
Who is Ezra Koenig?
Koenig is best known as a musician, specifically as the lead vocalist and guitarist for the band Vampire Weekend. He was born in New York City in 1984, before his parents moved with him to Glen Ridge, New Jersey, according to Rolling Stone. He eventually returned and went to Columbia University, graduating in 2006, as reported by Columbia College Today.
“New York kind of feels like the country that my family originates from,” Koenig told Variety in 2019. “There’s something about the Upper West Side, in particular, that’s like the capital of that country—a place of origin where I feel like I understand the history and the archetypes pretty well.”
Following college, Koenig joined the Teach For America program and got a job as an eighth grade English teacher at Junior High School 258 in Brooklyn. In 2008, Koenig told MTV of teaching while pursuing music, “It was a pretty hectic lifestyle. I mean, [being a full-time musician] is a hectic lifestyle too, but to teach all day, then go record or try to, you know, play a show, and then wake up and go to work again was pretty difficult.”
But it didn’t take long for his music to become successful. A year later, Vampire Weekend signed a record deal with XL Recordings. The band went on to win best alternative music album at the Grammys twice, in 2014 for Modern Vampires of the City and in 2019 for Father of the Bride. Koenig has also helped score movies and contributed to soundtracks, including for I Love You, Man, Boyhood, Paper Towns, Peter Rabbit, Booksmart, and Champions.
In 2015, he started hosting an online talk radio show called Time Crisis, airing on Apple Music’s radio channel Beats 1. Jones was one of his first guests, and she has made appearances throughout the years.
How long have Koenig and Jones been together?
The pair started dating in 2016, but kept their relationship fairly private. That year, they were photographed at an event called the Champions of Our Planet’s Future at UCLA.
An onlooker did describe seeing them together to People in 2017 at the Sundance Film Festival. The eyewitness said they seem “very comfortable together,” adding, “She was calling him ‘baby,’ and after her interview at the studio, she walked up to him and was hugging him.”
They have made infrequent appearances in public together since, but did attend the 2024 Vanity Fair Oscar Party.
Do Jones and Koenig have children?
The couple welcomed their first child on Aug. 22, 2018: a baby boy named Isaiah. In 2021, Jones told NPR that it was a difficult time as her mother, Peggy Lipton, had passed away eight months earlier.
“The thing that’s the craziest about birth and death is just the utter rawness of feeling,” Jones explained. “It’s very binary, both things—becoming a mother and losing my mother—like, there’s my life before, and there’s my life after. And strangely, there’s something that’s not recognizable before those two things happened.”
Are Jones and Koenig married?
Koenig called Jones his wife in an interview, but Jones told The New Yorker in early July 2024 that they didn’t wed legally. “Oh, we’re not married,” she said. “We just kind of call each other that. But we are what we are, in the eyes of God!”
In April, Koenig told People similarly when asked about calling Jones his wife in interviews. “[We’re] married in the eyes of God,” he said.
Aimée Lutkin is the weekend editor at ELLE.com. Her writing has appeared in Jezebel, Glamour, Marie Claire and more. Her first book, The Lonely Hunter, will be released by Dial Press in February 2022.
