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If Lana Del Rey is known for anything besides her melancholic melodies, it’s dating “working-class,” salt of the earth men. Indeed, the most famous men she’s been with were more “fringe famous” than anything. This includes James-Barrie O’Neill, Francesco Carrozzini and, yes, G-Eazy (increasingly fringe famous with each passing year). It was after G-Eazy that things started getting more obscure, both in terms of musicians and everymen she dated. Take Clayton Johnson of The Johnsons, for example (who Del Rey was also engaged to for a brief period). Or Jack Donoghue of the band Salem.
But the blueprint for the type of man she was really looking for came in the form of Tulsa-based police officer Sean Larkin, who provided plenty of muse cachet for Chemtrails Over the Country Club, Blue Banisters and Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd. Evan Winiker briefly cushioned the blow from that sour romance before Del Rey was ostensibly led back to Jeremy Dufrene, a swamp (de facto, alligator) tour guide who operates near New Orleans.
Her latest pick, of course, remains more on-brand than ever, with Del Rey insisting she’s a simple, down-home country girl. In fact, holding off on releasing her supposed country-fied album, Lasso, until after she got married to a country boy can only lend more cachet to the record. Surely. As for how long Del Rey has actually known Dufrene, well, there’s an image of the two of them from March of 2019 after Del Rey took one of his tours (a phrase that sounds ripe with innuendo). She captioned the photo, “Jeremy lemme be captain at Arthur’s Air Boat Tours.” At that time in Del Rey’s career, she had released three singles from the still-unreleased Norman Fucking Rockwell: “Mariners Apartment Complex,” “Venice Bitch” and “Hope Is a Dangerous Thing for a Woman Like Me to Have – but I Have It.” Considering the themes of these songs—all three mixed with a tinge of melancholia and hope vis-à-vis relationships—it seems retroactively ironic that Del Rey would meet the man she was going to marry that year.
However, instead of starting a relationship with him then, Del Rey ended up with Sean Larkin by September of ’19—perhaps a benefit to fans who would get the subsequent albums that were so clearly inspired by him. Not to mention the A+ for Petty moment when Del Rey chose to only put up one billboard for Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd in Larkin’s town.
This particular moment also brought up something unique to Del Rey’s Notting Hill-esque dating selection. And that is: usually, the pressure of being famous and dating/getting married to a “civilian” is something that goes “easier” (like most things) for men. More specifically, famous men who want to date “normal” women. Take, for example, fellow Ocean’s Eleven cast members George Clooney (married to Amal Alamuddin, now Clooney) and Matt Damon (married to Luciana Barroso). No one is half as interested in doing an informational deep dive into these women/their past as they are in assessing who someone like Dufrene “is” because he’s now married to one of the biggest female pop stars in the world (even if she’s always billed as part of the “alternative” genre).
The same went for Britney Spears when she married the civilian that was (and remains) Kevin Federline (despite his likely insistence that he was “famous” in his own right for being a backup dancer) in 2004. Indeed, there are certain parallels to Spears and Del Rey here, not just because Spears herself is from Louisiana, which Del Rey will now likely make her honorary home, but because both men seemed to come out of nowhere and the “courtship” was very short before a wedding ensued. But as Del Rey herself says on “Margaret,” “When you know, you know.”
In Del Rey’s case, however, there appears to be no gold digging involved, with one “source” telling the Daily Mail, “Her friends and team did some digging on him over fears he could be using her, but his business is lucrative and he doesn’t need or want Lana’s money. They can see he treats her right and he’s very, very low maintenance. He gives her what she is seeking in a man and is romantic.” And also much older—fifty-six (born in one of the decades often referred to in her songs) to Del Rey’s thirty-nine. Though, obviously, it’s no secret that LDR has a fetish for older men, proudly announcing it on 2012’s “Cola” when she sang, “I gots a taste for men who are older.” And yes, a large portion of her visuals have been centered on paying tribute to “Daddy” figures (see: “Ride”). To the point of age, it’s additionally worth nothing that Del Rey also sings on the aforementioned “Margaret,” “When you’re old, you’re old/Like Hollywood and me.” Calling herself out as “old” in this instance leads one to believe that perhaps her own age/“ticking clock” was a factor in this seemingly “impromptu” life decision.
Either way, Del Rey seemed to be fulfilling her long-standing bridal dreams (having often posed as a bride for various magazine photoshoots, as recently as this year for Interview). Not just in the dress she wore and the type of man she walked down the “aisle” (or rather, grass) with, but in terms of having the wedding next to a swamp (location is everything), therefore embodying the “everywoman” spirit she’s been veering toward in her work ever since the year she first met Dufrene. Her manifestation of this wish on 2021’s “Let Me Love You Like A Woman” came in the form of: “I come from a small town, how ‘bout you?/I only mention it ‘cause I’m ready to leave L.A./And I want you to come/Eighty miles north or south will do/I don’t care where, as long as you’re with me/And I’m with you, and you let me/Let me love you like a woman.”
While Louisiana might be a lot farther than eighty miles (and to the east) from L.A., Del Rey has been hinting at a retreat from Hollywood life for a long time now. Right down to her frequent random-ass visits to places like Alabama, where she went viral for “waitressing” at a Waffle House in 2023. Or telling the audience at the 2024 Ivor Novello Awards, “I decided not to do a stadium tour this year because I wanna go to McCreary County in Kentucky, I wanna go meet the people, I wanna say hi and have breakfast with them, it’s not always about just going north and going to every island straightforward and picking up money in stadiums.”
Del Rey has apparently held fast to those desires, swapping out McCreary County in Kentucky for Lafourche and St. Charles parishes in Louisiana. Trading in her erstwhile “persona” for that of bayou bride. Though that doesn’t mean this new phase of Del Rey’s life won’t still invoke plenty of inspiration. Just please, no songs about swamps or bayous. That should remain strictly Creedence Clearwater Revival territory.
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Genna Rivieccio
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