New York City Ballet principal dancer Sara Mearns is engaged to longtime boyfriend Gavin Kelley. Mearns, 40, announced the news in an exclusive interview with PEOPLE published Oct. 3.
“Being a human for 40 years and a dancer for 37 of them has led me to my soulmate,” Mearns said. She added that she would willingly live through the difficult and joyful parts of her past again knowing Kelley would eventually be part of her life.
PEOPLE describes Kelley, 50, as an art organization director and writer. The couple has kept its long-term relationship largely private, and neither has publicly established exactly when they began dating.
Mearns was previously married to choreographer Joshua Bergasse from 2018 to 2024. No wedding date or other ceremony details for Mearns and Kelley have been announced.
Kelley Brought Mearns Flowers After Her Christmas ‘Nutcracker’ Performance
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One of Mearns’ few public posts with Kelley came on Christmas Day 2025. She shared a photograph of him presenting her with a bouquet onstage at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center before the two embraced.
“Happy Holidays,” Mearns wrote alongside the Instagram post. She was performing the Sugarplum Fairy in New York City Ballet’s production of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker during the holiday season.
The photograph appeared months before Mearns publicly described Kelley as her soulmate. At the time, she did not use the post to discuss their relationship or announce any plans for the future.
Mearns Performed With Hearing Aids After Years of Missing Musical Cues
Mearns has also spent the past year speaking publicly about a part of her career that audiences could not necessarily see from their seats. She was diagnosed with nerve hearing loss in 2020 after problems that had affected both conversations and her work in the studio.
She told PEOPLE that her partners sometimes had to signal musical cues she could not hear. During the pandemic, masks made conversations even harder, and she eventually sought professional help after years of struggling with the problem.
Mearns later found hearing aids that worked with the physical demands of dancing. She wore them while performing the lead in Diamonds in Copenhagen in August 2025 and said she could again hear individual instruments in the orchestra instead of depending on a partner for her entrance.
The 2025 holiday season was also her first run of The Nutcracker with the devices. Mearns has since become a Phonak ambassador and has spoken about wanting younger dancers with hearing loss to know that the diagnosis does not automatically end a performing career.
Mearns Has Been a New York City Ballet Principal Since 2008
Mearns began dancing at age 3 in South Carolina and moved to New York as a teenager to study at the School of American Ballet. She became an apprentice with New York City Ballet in 2003 and was promoted to principal dancer in 2008.
Her repertory has included leading roles across George Balanchine’s works, including Diamonds from Jewels and the Sugarplum Fairy in The Nutcracker. A New York City Ballet podcast devoted to Diamonds featured Mearns discussing a role she had already performed for more than 12 years by 2020.
She has also originated roles for choreographers including Justin Peck, Kyle Abraham, Alexei Ratmansky, Pam Tanowitz and Christopher Wheeldon. The Center for Ballet and the Arts at New York University lists Mearns as a resident fellow for its 2026-27 season while she continues her work with New York City Ballet.