In pyjama bottoms and a loose cardigan, she looked every inch the tired new mother taking a relaxed walk beneath the California sun.
With her baby held close and her casually dressed fiancé at her side in shorts and a baseball cap, she seemed to blend effortlessly into the affluent community of Ross, north of San Francisco.
Yet a closer look would have revealed that this was far from an ordinary suburban family. The seemingly unremarkable mother was, in fact, global pop superstar Lady Gaga.
The singer, who has repeatedly reinvented herself, sold millions of records, won an Oscar and become one of the world’s most instantly recognisable performers, appears to have embraced one of her most unexpected roles yet: a traditional wife and mother.
For now, at least, the dramatic costumes, sky-high footwear and attention-seeking fashion statements that have long defined Gaga’s public image have been set aside.
Instead, she has been seen in understated, comfortable clothing while caring for her baby and settling into a discreet lifestyle in one of California’s wealthier communities. Her low-key routine has reportedly included drinking red wine at The Corner Bar, shopping for cookware at Crate and Barrel, and driving herself to Pilates in her £31,000 Tesla, with a baby seat fitted in the back.
The quieter existence signals a striking new phase for the 40-year-old star, whose public appearances have traditionally been carefully staged spectacles.
Last week, reports confirmed that Gaga and technology entrepreneur Michael Polansky, 42, have welcomed a daughter named Rose Bean. Sources say the baby is already a few months old.
The name Rose is believed to reference one of Gaga’s favourite songs, Edith Piaf’s La Vie En Rose. The singer has already paid tribute to the classic with a rose tattoo on her back, alongside the song’s title.
Lady Gaga has built her career on reinvention, becoming one of the world’s most recognisable pop culture icons
Rose Bean’s middle name is reportedly a tribute to the late civil rights campaigner Carl Bean, whose 1977 song I Was Born This Way helped inspire Gaga’s celebrated 2011 anthem, Born This Way.
For an artist known for theatrical performances and an extravagant public persona, her daughter’s name offers a rare and personal insight into Gaga’s increasingly private family life.
One Ross resident has described the singer’s new lifestyle as that of a “trad”, short for traditional, wife. The woman, who says she has seen Gaga around the tree-lined town of approximately 2,500 people, said: “Ross is incredibly quiet. A lot of the residents work in technology or around Silicon Valley. You do see Gaga and Michael, but they keep a very low profile. Sometimes she is accompanied by a woman who appears to be an assistant, but there is no large security detail.
“I hardly noticed her the first time I saw her in a coffee shop. It was only when I spotted the huge diamond engagement ring that I realised who she was.
“Nobody causes a scene when she is out, and that seems to suit her.” Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, reportedly moved into Polansky’s £7.5 million, four-bedroom Ross property at the beginning of summer. The move marked her departure from the £16 million Malibu beachfront mansion where she had lived for more than ten years.
A second local resident said: “Given Gaga’s wealth, reportedly around £220 million, the Ross house is relatively modest. But it is comfortable, private and surrounded by trees.
“Nothing can be seen from the road. Michael purchased it several years ago, before their relationship began. He is known locally as a quiet, courteous and genuinely nice man.”
In a rare interview with a technology publication, the Harvard-educated Polansky revealed that he and Gaga, who began dating in 2019 and are now engaged, were introduced through her mother, Cynthia Germanotta. She runs the singer’s Born This Way Foundation. Polansky built his fortune in technology after forming a friendship with Sean Parker, the Facebook co-founder.
He now leads a company that uses surplus human skin from medical procedures to help test new medicines, while also serving on the board of Parker’s cancer charity.
Speaking to TechCrunch, Polansky recalled Cynthia’s efforts to introduce them: “[Cynthia] had been saying for months and months, ‘I want to set you up with my daughter.’ I thought, I think you’re just teasing me.”
But when he and Gaga met at the end of 2019 ‘it all made perfect sense’, he said. When the pandemic hit and everything shut down in the spring of 2020, he moved into Gaga’s Malibu mansion.
A neighbour told The Mail on Sunday: ‘You would see them walking along the beach with her two French bulldogs, deep in conversation.
‘Michael is a big teddy bear of a man and very sweet.
‘It was probably the longest time I’d ever seen her at the house. She was there for months and months. By the time lockdown ended they were a solid couple and the next thing I heard was they’re engaged.’
For her part, Gaga calls Michael ‘the love of my life’. ‘He’s my best friend in the whole world,’ she said. ‘He just blew me away from the minute I met him. He always, I think, really saw me and I think I always really saw him.’
Motherhood and marriage have been on Gaga’s mind for a while.
In interviews to promote her global Mayhem Ball tour, which ended in April, she spoke repeatedly about wanting to take time off and start a family, telling one US talkshow host: ‘I’m hoping motherhood will be my next starring role.’
It has been widely reported that Gaga used a surrogate to become a mother, something her representatives declined to comment on last night. But one source said: ‘She was photographed a lot up to the end of April when the tour ended. She had three songs in The Devil Wears Prada 2, which came out in May, and she did a bit of promotional work for that and then she disappeared.
‘No one ever saw her looking pregnant in public.’
Birth records show Rose was born on June 9 at 11.19pm at Cedars-Sinai hospital in LA.
Last week, it was confirmed that her child with tech titan Michael Polansky, 42, is a daughter named Rose Bean who, sources say, is already a few months old
The source, who calls Gaga by the nickname her friends and family use, said: ‘Stefi completely dropped out this summer and went into nesting mode. She and Michael took the summer off and went to northern California and hunkered down.
‘People were gossiping about her going silent but we all thought that maybe she and Michael had eloped. When the news broke about the baby it was a surprise but only because she managed to keep it a secret.’
The source added: ‘No one is surprised she’s become a mum, it’s what she always wanted.’
Gaga’s new role comes amid a life marked by extraordinary highs and lows.
She has spoken openly about the trauma of being raped by a music producer 20 years her senior when she was just 19 and starting out.
Speaking on the 2021 Apple TV series The Me You Can’t See, which was the brainchild of Prince Harry and Oprah Winfrey, she says the rapist ‘dropped me off pregnant on a corner, at my parents’ house, because I was vomiting and sick’.
The assault left her with such severe PTSD that she used drugs and alcohol to numb the emotional pain, saying she would smoke up to 20 marijuana joints in a day and was a habitual user of cocaine.
A ‘psychotic break’ came during filming of A Star Is Born in 2018 (for which the song Shallow won her an Oscar).
She was hospitalised and began taking the powerful anti-psychotic drug lithium.
She said: ‘I had a total psychotic break and, for a couple of years, I was not the same girl.’
Gaga, who took her stage name from the 1984 Queen song Radio Ga Ga, has always used music to heal her pain and connect with others who felt alienated.
Her followers, who call themselves ‘Little Monsters’ and refer to her as ‘Mother Monster’, lapped it up as she constantly reinvented herself, often through performances or appearances designed to shock or provoke.
When she sang Paparazzi at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards she wore a lace bodysuit that began leaking gallons of fake blood.
Then there was her raw meat dress, which she explained was a protest against the US military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy for gay soldiers. ‘The message was that if people don’t stand up for their rights they will soon have as many rights as the meat on their bones,’ she said.
Another time she arrived at the Grammys inside a giant translucent egg and ‘hatched’ on stage before singing Born This Way.
‘I like to liberate myself with my ability to change,’ she has admitted. ‘I’m a chameleon.’
She sold 170 million records thanks to hits like Poker Face and Bad Romance, became a fashion icon, Hollywood star, LGBTQ+ activist – she admitted to being bisexual in a 2009 interview – and, most recently, make-up guru thanks to her best-selling Haus Labs cruelty-free cosmetics brand.
There were two failed engagements along the way to actor Taylor Kinney and talent agent Christian Carino.
While friends say Polansky does not want to be in the public eye, he has become involved in Gaga’s world, sharing writing credits on some of her recent songs including a ballad called Blade of Grass about their engagement.
She said: ‘A long time ago we were in the backyard and he said, “If I ever propose to you what should I do?” I said, “You can just wrap a blade of grass around my finger and I’ll say yes.”
‘Michael’s sense of gravity might be the thing that I was attracted to about him the most.
‘None of my tricks were gonna work on him.
‘So many people in my life were looking to me for a good time. He saw the “real” me, not that stage version. I feel like a healthy, whole person for the first time.’
There may be another surprise lurking behind the couple’s apparently quiet life together.
While Gaga is widely assumed to be the bigger earner, one friend claims Polansky has amassed a fortune of his own through his technology investments and shares.
‘Everyone assumes that Gaga’s the richest one in that relationship, but I wouldn’t be so certain,’ the friend said.
‘Michael is close friends with Sean Parker who founded Napster and Facebook and is worth billions. I’m not saying Michael is worth billions, but the word on the street in Silicon Valley is that he’s worth several hundred million.
‘He’s not someone who is chasing Gaga’s money. He’s done very well for himself.’
The couple were seen alighting from a private jet in Los Angeles last week, with Gaga protectively cradling baby Rose beneath her trench coat.
As she settles back into her Malibu mansion, the woman who once made provocation her calling card appears to be rebelling in a rather different direction.
But motherhood could well be her most satisfying role to date.
