Lana Del Rey was not prepared to say “see you later, alligator” to her future husband Jeremy Dufrene after meeting him on one of his swamp boat tours in Louisiana.
In a recent W cover story, the “Summertime Sadness” singer, 40, revealed that she instantly fell in love with the tour guide while taking one of his bayou excursions to see alligators in 2019.
“When we met, I realized pretty immediately that I loved him, but that it might get difficult because of what I was bringing to the table,” Del Rey told the outlet. “Jeremy said, ‘’I work with alligators — I have tough skin.’ And he is a man of his word. All the things that made me upset — and there were so many! — he would just listen and say, ‘You be you — and I’ll just love you more.'”
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Del Rey and Dufrene later reconnected years after that fateful tour and, in September, tied the knot in a small wedding ceremony that was held in the same bayou where Dufrene conducts his tours.
However, Del Rey explained that the first year of their marriage hasn’t been exactly easy given the heightened media attention surrounding their relationship.
“If I was him, I would have been nervous — my emotions were more overwhelming than usual, and my usual emotions can be quite overwhelming!” she said. “But Jeremy was fine. He said, ‘If you want, worry about yourself, but don’t worry about me!'”
She noted that Dufrene’s quiet sensibility and the couple’s frequent “parking-lot time” hangouts also served as the inspiration for her unreleased track, “Stars Fell on Alabama.”
“Jeremy is the most impactful person in my life,” Del Rey said. “He’s quiet in public, but around me he talks all the time. It’s strange: Jeremy and I have what we call ‘parking-lot time.’ We spend so much time in parking lots, just reading or talking in the car.”
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She continued, “Sometimes, in life, you think you’re the only one in the world who loves a particular thing, like sitting in an empty Macy’s or Home Depot parking lot. You might be really weird to some people, but then you find another soul who feels the same way.”
And, perhaps most importantly, Del Rey revealed that she’s gotten more much more comfortable with alligators as a result of their relationship.
“I was nervous at first, but Louisiana has nicer alligators than Florida,” she admitted. “Jeremy swims with the alligators! I swim in the bayou also, and the alligators are there, but I don’t swim alone.”
