Chase Stokes and Kelsea Ballerini’s Rule That Keeps Their Relationship Strong Is British Royalty Coded
Royal relationship. No, country singer Kelsea Ballerini and her actor boyfriend, Chase Stokes, aren’t royalty. But they do have similarities to one British royal couple—Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Ballerini and Stokes’ rule for keeping their relationship strong is just like the one the Duke and Duchess of Sussex followed when they started dating.
Chase and Kelsea don’t go longer than three weeks without seeing each other
The “Peter Pan” singer and actor always find their way back to each other after being apart due to their schedules. Speaking to People, Stokes shared they have a rule of “never going more than three weeks” without seeing each other.
“We don’t BS each other. If we need to make the effort to show up when one’s across the country, we do it,” he said. “The amount of effort that we put into our careers, we should be doubling that in our personal lives. It’s about really putting in effort.”
“And it’s not always easy, and it’s not always convenient,” he added. “But having a big, beautiful life didn’t come from convenience or ease.” The pair currently have a temporary home base in Los Angeles, California, despite typically splitting their time between Nashville, Tennessee, and South Carolina.
When they’re apart, Stokes and Ballerini stay connected over virtual dates. “We’ve done FaceTime date nights where we’ll pick a cuisine and then figure out, ‘Do we want to do red wine tonight? Do we want to do a white wine or are we just drinking water?’ So, we have found beautiful ways to make distance at times work.”
“In the future and as we’ve continued to grow in our relationship,” Stokes added, “we just try to make sure our schedules can coexist, and we have time.”
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle followed a similar rule to Stokes and Ballerini’s when they started dating
So, how are the Outer Banks star and country singer British royalty coded? Stokes and Ballerini’s aforementioned “rule” is exactly what Harry and Meghan did when they started dating in 2016.
In their eponymous Netflix docuseries, the pair, who married in May 2018, opened up about the early days of their relationship, including their first two dates at Soho House and how they managed their blossoming romance living an ocean apart.
At the time, Meghan lived in Toronto, Canada, where Suits was filmed, and Harry lived in London, England. (Now they live in Montecito, California.)
Meghan, Harry shared, came up with a “two-week rule” for their relationship—not unlike Ballerini and Stokes. “We had to see each other in or around two weeks,” Harry recalled, noting he wasn’t sure that it would work. “I said, ‘How is that even possible with the stuff that I’m doing? I’m not going to be able to travel to see you that much.’”
“It was much easier for me to go and see him in the U.K.,” Meghan explained, sharing she often stayed with Harry at his home on Kensington Palace grounds. “I could still just get on a commercial flight and go and see him under the radar.”
They also met on Instagram like Harry and Meghan did
Stokes and Ballerini’s relationship has another British royalty-coded layer. Just like Harry and Meghan, they met on Instagram. Ballerini slid into Stokes’ DMs in December 2022 before she confirmed they were dating in February 2023.
The “Cowboys Cry Too” singer revealed on the “Call Me Daddy” podcast that she’d said to him, “Hi, Chase Stokes,” in a nod to his Instagram handle @hichasestokes.
As for Harry and Meghan, the former saw the Suits star in a friend’s video—with a dog filter on their faces, no less—and asked the friend to put him in touch with her. Meghan got Harry’s Instagram handle, as he recalled in Spare, and messaged him, “Hello!” The rest, as the saying goes, is history.
