Who is Rich Paul? All you need to know about Adele’s husband as star ‘confirms’ marriage

For months, Adele and Rich Paul have been sharing clues about their relationship with the public.

From the singer telling fans that she’s married during her Las Vegas residency, to sports agent Paul dodging direct questions about their marital status in interviews, the couple have been complimentary, if occasionally reserved, about one another when speaking to the world.

However, the most recent update came from the “Easy on Me” vocalist piping up during a comedy set of her close friend Alan Carr in Los Angeles. According to others in the audience, when Carr asked whether anyone present had married recently, Adele shouted out: “I did!”

Though Paul has been more coy with giving details about his relationship with the Grammy and Oscar-winning recording artist, many are now considering the pair officially a married couple.

Despite Adele, 35, being more of a global household name, Paul, 41, is a significant player in US sports and culture in his own right – and it all started with a jersey.

Born on 16 December 1981, Rich Paul grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. After graduating from high school, Paul, a sports and fashion fan, began a business selling vintage sports jerseys out of his trunk.

A few years later, in 2002, Paul met fellow Ohioan LeBron James in a chance encounter at the Ackron-Canton Airport, where the future basketball star was drawn in by Paul’s vintage jersey of Warren Moon, an American football player.

This interaction was crucial in Paul’s future – they exchanged contact, Paul sold James two jerseys, and they became firm friends. Paul recalled the moment in an interview with ESPN in 2012, saying how inconsequential their meeting would have been had he not been wearing the sports regalia: “If I don’t have on that jersey, we don’t have a conversation.”

After Paul joined the NBA star’s inner circle, he then began working under the sports executive Leon Rose at major agency CAA in 2006.

Six years later in 2012, Paul left Rose and CAA to establish his own agency, Klutch Sports Group, and took the incredibly lucrative James with him.

Quickly, Paul became known across the sports industry as a force as an agent, brokering high-value deals for athletes. Just last year, Forbes named Paul fourth on its list of most powerful sports agents, with his group’s contracts totalling at least $1.4bn (£1.23bn).

Prior to the start of his relationship with Adele in the summer of 2021, Paul had three children from a previous relationship, while Adele has a son from her first marriage to charity entrepreneur Simon Konecki.

Though they’d met in passing as early as 2016, they only properly connected while on the dance floor at a mutual friend’s event. “He was always there, I just didn’t see him,” Adele told Vogue in October 2021.

A month later, she also told Rolling Stone that her relationship with Paul is the most “incredible, openhearted and easiest” one she’s ever been in.

In May 2022, the “Someone Like You” singer shared photos of herself and Paul outside a $58 million (£47.5 million) property in Beverly Hills that previously belonged to Sylvester Stallone. With the sports executive shown dangling a set of keys, this was seen as the announcement of the pair buying their first home together.

Since September 2023, Adele has referred to herself as married, or to having a husband, on multiple occasions. One of the most notable instances took place when a fan at her Caesars Palace show asked the star to marry her.

Adele replied: “You can’t marry me, I’m straight, my love. My husband’s here tonight, he’s here.”

Yet, in October, Paul played coy when he was asked by CBS journalist Gayle King whether she should now refer to Adele as “Mrs Paul”.

“You can say whatever you want,” he said, before explaining he’s not the “type of person to put [his] personal life” out in the open. “It’s not for the media,” he added.