Chase Stokes

18 Nov 2025

Chase Stokes Slams ‘F–king Weird’ Comments About Kelsea Ballerini & Ex Madelyn Cline: ‘Grow Up’

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Chase Stokes is not pleased with certain people in Kelsea Ballerini‘s comments section.

After the country singer-songwriter — who reportedly reconciled with the Outer Banks star two months after ending their three-year relationship — posted a TikTok promoting new song “People Pleaser,” an onslaught of viewers replied with remarks that didn’t sit well with Stokes. “These comments are f–king weird,” he wrote.

The actor added, “Grow up.”

Some outlets have reported that Stokes’ response was in reference to certain comments about his ex-girlfriend and Outer Banks costar Madelyn Cline. On a different song from Ballerini’s brand new Mount Pleasant EP, “Emerald City,” she sings about struggling with jealousy and obsessive thoughts about her partner’s former flame, which has led some people to take sides between the two women.

“Always liked the color of my eyes ’til I knew she had brown/ I’m green/ Always liked my naïve innocence ’til I learned she got around,” the musician croons on the track. (Yes, Cline has brown eyes.)

But as one person wrote on Ballerini’s video — in which she had simply sung along to “People Pleaser” while showing off her glam look for the day — the song “Emerald City” simply “goes to show the most beautiful woman in the world can still have feelings of jealousy and insecurity.”

Ballerini has been clear in the past that she has no feelings of ill will toward Cline. “I met her and I talked to her and she’s lovely,” she said of the actress on a 2023 episode of Call Her Daddy. “And I think she’s wildly talented. I think the internet did its best to make it weird, and it didn’t work for them … At the end of the day, I’m a girl’s girl, I don’t buy into the bulls–t. I think they have a beautiful working relationship.”

It’s unclear what the status of Ballerini and Stokes’ relationship is currently. In September, a rep for the singer confirmed to Billboard that they’d split, about three years after they’d started dating.

However, People reported earlier in November that the pair appeared to have rekindled their romance, citing an onlooker who’d witnessed them holding hands while out to eat in Dubrovnik, Croatia, where the next season of Outer Banks is filming.


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07 Jan 2025

Kelsea Ballerini Celebrates Her 2 Year Anniversary With ‘Teammate’ Chase Stokes

Kelsea Ballerini has been happily in love with Chase Stokes for the past two years, and the “Peter Pan” singer took to Instagram on Tuesday (Jan. 7) to celebrate the couple’s anniversary.

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“Two years of catching each other in countless cities, perfecting a chimichurri steak, and creating a world that revolves around dogs. love you so, teammate,” she captioned a photo carousel of sweet moments with the actor, in which the duo are seen kissing and cuddling, traveling and generally having fun together.

Ballerini and Stokes went public with their romance in Feb. 2023 and since then they’ve walked a number of red carpets together and frequently chronicled their love affair on their socials. That same month, Ballerini dropped her Rolling Up the Welcome Mat EP, in which she detailed the devastation of her divorce from fellow country star Morgan Evans. 

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“I think the beautiful thing about being with an artist — in a different field but an artist — is that also equates to being with a truth-teller,” she said on Sunday Today With Willie Geist in October of dating the Outer Banks star. “When I got into this relationship, I hadn’t put out Welcome Mat to him. I remember I sent that EP to him and I just said, ‘Hey, you’re going to ask eventually. So, I’m just going to go ahead and give this to you.’ He lifted that record up and supported it and stood side-stage the whole time. That takes someone who really celebrates truth-telling, and believes in the person that’s doing it.”

24 Oct 2024

Kelsea Ballerini Opens Up About Respecting ‘Truth-Telling’ With Boyfriend Chase Stokes

Kelsea Ballerini is sharing what it’s like navigating a post-divorce relationship in the public eye.

The superstar, ahead of dropping her newest album, Patterns, dropped by Sunday Today With Willie Geist, and in a preview clip shared exclusively with Billboard, Ballerini says that dating actor Chase Stokes as a celebrity comes with a lot of “trial and error,” adding, “I’m not used to the interest in me as a person, as much as I have been warming up to the last couple of years. For a long time, I was used to being the girl who sings ‘Peter Pan’ to people. I love that, I love that role. As far as the floodgates that Welcome Mat opened up as far as human me, girl me, is different now. I’m still getting my footing on how I share things and how I share and my relationship and all that stuff. It’s not normal so I think it’s fair enough that it’s an ebb and a flow.”

Ballerini and Stokes went public with their romance in Feb. 2023 and since then they’ve walked a number of red carpets together and frequently chronicled their love affair on their socials. That same month, Ballerini dropped her Rolling Up the Welcome Mat EP, in which she detailed the devastation of her divorce from fellow country star Morgan Evans. 

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“I think the beautiful thing about being with an artist — in a different field but an artist — is that also equates to being with a truth-teller,” she told Geist of dating the Outer Banks star. “When I got into this relationship, I hadn’t put out Welcome Mat to him. I remember I sent that EP to him and I just said, ‘Hey, you’re going to ask eventually. So, I’m just going to go ahead and give this to you.’ He lifted that record up and supported it and stood side-stage the whole time. That takes someone who really celebrates truth-telling, and believes in the person that’s doing it.”

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Watch the exclusive clip with Ballerini below, and the full sit-down airs this Sunday (Oct. 27) on NBC’s Sunday Today With Willie Geist.

25 Oct 2023

Kelsea Ballerini Says She Has ‘No Shame’ About Sliding Into Boyfriend Chase Stokes’ DMs

Kelsea Ballerini has no regrets, especially where Chase Stokes is concerned. In her new cover story with Nylon, the country star opened up about how she slid into her now boyfriend’s DMs late last year, not long after divorcing songwriter Morgan Evans.

“I was at a bar in Nashville with some friends from Charleston, and they were like, ‘What about Chase?’” Ballerini recalled in the story published Tuesday (Oct. 24).

For context, Charleston is where Stokes shoots his hit Netflix show Outer Banks. After her friends suggested him, Ballerini followed the actor on Instagram — and he quickly followed her back. “I was just like, ‘Why am I waiting for this guy to reach out to me? This is 2022,’” she added.

The “This Feeling” singer ended up sending him a flirty message at 1:07 a.m., something she now laughs about. “Bro, I know,” she told the publication. “Listen, I was living my best life. I have no shame in that game.”

“I really did [know] as soon as I met him,” she continued. “And maybe that sounds like I’ve learned zero things, but I’ve always been a heart-first girl … and the truth is it’s never led me astray. I’ve always been where I needed to be while I needed to be there.”

“We are both very much so golden-retriever energy most of the time, but we both have a little bite in us, and we’re both incredibly driven,” Ballerini added of her beau. “He is the first person I’ve been in a relationship with that I feel like is not my complete opposite.”

As happy in love as Ballerini is now, the musician is still making sense of her tumultuous past couple of years, which have been marked by her publicly tense divorce from Evans. The pair was married for nearly five years before calling it quits in 2022, a breakup that inspired Ballerini’s heartbreaking EP Rolling Up the Welcome Mat.

According to her, the divorce made “a lot of conservative Karens very upset” and turned her into a target for social media comments about how she hadn’t tried hard enough to be a good wife. She told Nylon, “That scared me.”