Rich Paul says he met longtime partner Adele through a friend and that their connection grew “organically.” On Craig Melvin’s “Glass Half Full,” the Klutch Sports Group founder also joked about becoming a “person of interest” as their relationship turned serio
Rich Paul had spent years living in the kind of social orbit where introductions happen almost on autopilot—sports stars, high-profile schedules, the constant overlap of people who end up in the same rooms.
But when Craig Melvin asked him how he met Adele, Paul made it sound less like a planned collision and more like timing doing its job.
“Through a friend. I had known her for some time,” Paul said on the June 9 episode of Melvin’s “Glass Half Full” podcast. He described the circles they move in—“you’re in these circles”—and said he never tried to force anything with someone in that world.
“It was really something that happened very organically, really.”
He also admitted he wasn’t fully steeped in Adele’s catalog before they met. “Obviously, you can’t help but to hear the monster hits,” Paul said when asked if he had previously listened to her music. “But, no, not exactly.”
“I didn’t know all of the joints that I know now,” he added.
That shift—from familiar enough to be aware, to suddenly knowing her songs closely—matched how Paul described the relationship itself: they didn’t start with a big announcement or a dramatic pivot. They ran into each other the way people do when their lives keep intersecting.
“We’re all in the same circles, and, you know, we’re hanging or whatnot,” Paul said. “We just used to always see each other, laugh and joke. It was just cordial, really, just cordial.”
Melvin pressed, asking, “Until?”
Paul leaned into the humor. “Until it became not so cordial. Until I became a person of interest,” he joked, prompting Melvin to laugh. “A suspect,” Melvin quipped.
The conversation drifted into another kind of confidence: the one Paul carries as an agent who represents some of the biggest names in sports. He represents LeBron James. Anthony Davis. A’ja Wilson. and Tyrese Maxey. and the casual certainty in how he spoke about his own talents didn’t disappear when the topic turned back to himself.
Asked about his singing, he didn’t hold back. “I’m the best singer in the house,” Paul joked.
Adele and Paul started dating in 2021 and have kept their relationship relatively private. The two also sparked engagement rumors in 2024 after Adele responded to a fan’s poster at her concert with: “‘Will you marry me?’ I can’t marry you because I’m already getting married, so I can’t.”
Paul’s story on “Glass Half Full” keeps landing on the same theme: the connection started quietly, grew through familiarity, and only later became something more visible—first in the way people reacted, then in the way the relationship changed.
Viewers can watch Melvin’s full conversation with Paul on TODAY’s YouTube channel, or listen wherever they get their podcasts.
Rich Paul Adele Glass Half Full Craig Melvin Klutch Sports Group LeBron James Anthony Davis A'ja Wilson Tyrese Maxey TODAY podcast