Looks like some lucky lady finally stopped making sense and put a ring on former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne.
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The 73-year-old musician and filmmaker casually revealed his engagement to 55-year-old Mala Gaonkar by calling her his “fiancée” in an interview with The Times published Saturday.
While talking about his Sept. 5 album Who Is The Sky? and the story behind track nine, “Moisturizing Thing,” Byrne revealed he’s off the market (sorry, ladies).
“My fiancée will sometimes come at me with greasy hands, ready to smear my face. And at one point I thought, ‘What if I wake up and really looked younger?’ ” Byrne told the outlet. “But there’s a message, too. About how people judge us by the way we look. You learn a lesson you didn’t expect at the start.”
Byrne and Gaonkar share a home in New York, according to The Times.
The couple has attended multiple high-profile events together, including the 2023 Oscars, the Dune: Part Two premiere in 2024, and a special screening of My Mother’s Wedding in August 2025.
Meanwhile, this will be the second marriage for Byrne and Gaonkar.
Byrne was married to Adelle Lutz from 1987 to 2004, and together they share a daughter, Malu.
Gaonkar was previously married to financier Oliver Haarmann, who is currently in a relationship with Reese Witherspoon, according to The Daily Mail. The couple shares two sons.
Haarmann is a founding partner of Searchlight Capital Partners, a private equity firm. Witherspoon began dating him in 2023 after her split from Jim Toth, her husband of 12 years.
Gaonkar, a financier and Harvard graduate, founded the hedge fund SurgoCap Partners in 2022.
SurgoCap Partners launched with $1.8 billion in assets, making it the largest female-led financial launch in history.
The entrepreneur has also signed the Giving Pledge, a commitment by billionaires to give away most of their wealth to support philanthropic causes. It was founded by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
David Byrne Also Called a Talking Heads Reunion a “Fools Errand”
Talking Heads, formed in 1975 with members Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz, and Jerry Harrison, rose to fame with hits like “Once in a Lifetime” and “Road to Nowhere.” The band enjoyed 16 years of critical and commercial success before disbanding in 1991.
The group reportedly declined an $80 million offer from Live Nation for a reunion tour of six to eight shows.
In the interview where he announced his engagement, Byrne called a Talking Heads reunion a “fool’s errand.”
“On a practical level, trying to recreate the feeling that people had when they were in their early 20s? The time that they first heard that music? That’s a fool’s errand. And besides, I’m really enjoying what I’m doing,” he told the outlet.
Byrne’s first solo album in seven years, Who Is The Sky?, drops on Sept. 5.