Photo illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Getty Images

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 since last May Buffalo Bills quarterback, but the couple has managed to remain relatively low-key about their relationship. (It probably helps that there’s another celebrity-NFL player couple taking up most of the spotlight.) But that doesn’t mean we don’t know anything about the couple. Let’s start at the beginning.

The couple was first spotted together in May 2023, shortly after reports that Allen and his longtime girlfriend Brittany Williams had split. For a few days, he and Steinfeld were seen walking around New York, eating sushi and riding an escalator. That is Love.

A source said at the time People that the two had “hung out for a few weeks” and had a good time. “It’s new, but they’re having fun,” the source said. We don’t know how these two met, but I think the safe bet would be with Raya.

In August 2023, Allen went to the Pardon my opinion podcast and addressed the tabloid interest in his relationship. “The fact that anyone cares about this still drives me crazy,” he said. This was before Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce started dating publicly. So it’s fair that he didn’t know that people would go crazy when one of the NFL’s best players dated a beautiful celebrity.

When the NFL season began, Steinfeld took her WAG duties seriously. She was photographed with Allen’s mother at a store that sells Bills gear.

When the NFL season was over, Allen was able to spend time with his girlfriend. The couple was spotted driving around Orange County in late January of this year. A month later, a source shared People that Allen and Steinfeld had a “serious relationship.”

“They always planned to spend more time together after his season ended. Things were going really well,” the source told the tabloid. “They are both very family orientated and ambitious and want to protect their relationship and keep it private. They agreed on all of this.”

In April, Steinfeld posted a series of photos on Instagram of her on a balcony overlooking Paris. This seemed to have nothing to do with their relationship until three months later.

In July of this year, Allen revealed that he, too, had been in Paris when he posted the back of Steinfeld’s head on his Instagram grid. What a twist! I think this is technically a tough start, even if her face isn’t in the photo.

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 the exact same knife for Christmas. This is the first time that Steinfeld has really addressed the fact that she was with Allen.

“I gave this knife to Josh for Christmas last year because we love cooking together. For Christmas he gave me…the same thing in a different color,” Steinfeld wrote. “After we exchanged our knives, lol, he told me that there is an old wives’ tale: if you give your significant other a knife, you have to pay for it, otherwise it means breaking up a relationship. So we swapped quarters so we wouldn’t have such a bad omen.”

For Halloween 2024, Steinfeld and Allen threw a circus party where they both dressed up as ringleaders. This ended up earning him a spot on her Instagram account that you really have to respect.

In November, Allen and Steinfeld shared the news of their engagement via Instagram. He seemed to give his all for the occasion, which came during a Bills bye week. In the photo, he kneels down in front of a breathtaking view of the sea, surrounded by flowers and… jugs of sand? Maybe they are candles? Whatever they are, I’m sure she loved it.

When asked by reporters how his farewell week went, Allen kept it to himself, saying, “Fantastic. It was great. Have some sun. Hung out with the family. It was fantastic.”