Kylie Minogue’s engagement to Paul Solomons is CONFIRMED

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Kylie Minogue and Paul Solomons’ engagement has been confirmed by his ‘thrilled’ step-mother, MailOnline can confirm. 

The singer, 52, has been dating GQ boss Paul, 46, since 2018 and in recent months has remained bashful over any speculation they are set to wed.   

Paul’s stepmother Gloria, said she was ‘thrilled’ and ‘excited’ that the pair are planning to marry as she spoke to MailOnline from the family home in the South Wales village of Llanbradach, near Caerphilly.

The news was accidentally revealed by former pop star turned actress Billie Piper, 38, in an interview with British ELLE magazine, released on Thursday. 

Gloria, who has been married to Paul’s father Mark for 41 years, said she had not been aware of Billie’s engagement slip – and was eager for details of her comments.

Gloria stood in the doorway of her terraced home as rain poured down listening to a detailed account of Billie’s revelation of how Paul had saved her life in a London nightclub years previously when she was just 18.

After being told the story, which she appeared not to have known, Gloria declared with a broad smile: ‘Well, she’s right there, my son is a hero.’

Gloria said she had met Kylie and liked her. ‘She’s very nice I’m thrilled they’re engaged. 

‘It’s very exciting. But, I’m sorry, I cannot tell you any more because I’ve been told not to. I respect my son and I respect Kylie too much to say any more.’

She said she did not know where or when the wedding will take place. 

Paul’s brother-in-law, Ivor Jones, said he and wife Nicola – Paul’s sister – had met ‘absolutely lovely’ Kylie. 

The couple said they were unable to comment further. 

‘She is absolutely lovely,’ said builder Mr. Jones, who has a 2020-plate grey F Pace Jaguar on the driveway next to his work van.

He added: ‘Give me a million and we can say something.’

After several long-term relationships, Kylie became engaged in 2016 to British actor Joshua Sasse, who was 28 at the time, but the relationship ended a year later  and subsequently suffered a breakdown. 

Kylie then started dating Paul in 2018 and last year gushed: ‘I’ve met someone who I feel good with. It feels right.’  

While Kylie is a pop icon, Paul, a graphic design graduate from Nottingham Trent University, is a media mogul and has been the award-winning creative director at British GQ and GQ style magazine since 2001. 

He previously worked at Marie Claire and has his own company Paul Solomons Design LTD.  

In October it was then reported by New Idea that the pair were planning to marry in Melbourne this year, depending on the outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Wedding bell speculation rang once in November when she appeared on Lorraine and grew bashful over some questioning. 

Kylie said: ‘He is so nice. He is probably not watching, I am sure he is at work. ‘He is such a good support. We have a laugh. We have both been through enough in our lives and just met at the right time, so it’s lovely.’

When Lorraine asked if she had any plans to marry her partner, Kylie merely batted away the question while bushing and exclaiming: ‘Lorraine!’ 

Proving the strength of their love, she later said of their romance: Yeah I did [get a magical feeling] actually. Maybe not quite like a romance novel, where there are butterflies and stars start shooting through the air! But yeah, definitely.

‘All my friends said to me, ‘You were acting different.’ And that’s when I knew that there was something. Because I thought I was acting cool but maybe I wasn’t.’

Kylie told how she and Paul got together after a mutual friend suggested they meet but it took her a while before she agreed to it.

She said: ‘I wasn’t interested in meeting anyone at that point, so I kept saying, ‘Yeah, but no – one day.’ Anyway, eventually that day happened and yeah, we connected, we liked each other.

Last year, she sweetly revealed that Paul has even charmed her 100-year-old grandma after making a ‘special effort’ when he first met her in Australia last year. 

She said: ‘She turned 100 last December and Paul did come to Australia for that. I think he flew in the day before so he was absolutely sideways with jetlag. It was like Meet The Parents times 100…

‘He did charm them all and he actually made a special effort. 

‘He might kill me for saying this but he would look up some Welsh sayings and just go to Google and hear how to say tiny Welsh phrases. My granny absolutely loved it.’ 

The engagement is a change of pace from Kylie’s previous words, as she had insisted she would never get married following her engagement to Joshua. 

In 2018, she said: ‘I never thought I would get married. Just going through ‘being engaged’ seems like an experiment, because I’d never, as a girl or in all my life, had a vision of getting married.

‘It’s not something I needed or wanted. My parents never brought me up with the idea of ‘the big marriage’. I never had it as a goal.’ 

KYLIE’S CHEQUERED, TRAGIC AND VERY PUBLIC LOVE LIFE 

Kylie has had a long string of public romances, which began when she burst on to screens in Neighbours in the Eighties, where she struck up a relationship with her on-screen love, played by Jason Donovan. 

The duo played Scott and Charlene and the characters wed in an iconic wedding that was broadcast in Australia in July 1987.

After three years as a couple, the couple struggled with distance as both their stars went on the rise and Kylie met and fell in love with tragic Michael Hutchence. 

Speaking about the split in 2016, Jason said: ‘It was an extremely painful parting of the ways and, without a doubt, I took a long time to recover from it. Years…

‘Years, definitely. It was bad enough that she’d run off with anybody, but she happened to run into the arms of the greatest rock god of the period, the very guy who I secretly wanted to be. That was a pretty big punch to take…

‘I’ve since bumped into Kylie quite a few times. The break-up never comes up in conversation. We’re not close enough to get into that.

Later in 1989, Kylie met late rocker Michael, who she started seeing after a gig in Australia, although she admitted they were ‘polar opposites’. 

She described his as ‘a dark bad boy and I was the pure good girl,’and revealed their romance started with faxes to each other’s hotels, using fake names, ‘Gabby Jones’ for her and ‘Swordfish’ for him, so no one would know.

Kylie detailed in a recent documentary: ‘He had insatiable curiosity, all the good things in life and some the bad. He opened up a whole new world for me. A lot of it was based around pleasure, let’s face it.’

She previously recalled: ‘I met a new person and I fell in love. Yes, he was this wild guy, he was the rocker, he was all of that.

‘But I’m always at pains to say he was Byron-esque, he was poetic, he was cultured and hilarious and tender, he was all of these other things.’

She continued: ‘I guess, I was at the perfect age, I was 21 years old, to get the butterfly wings and go out into the world and we collided at that time and I guess he just fast-tracked some of it. Anyway, it was a glorious time. I loved it.’

Things ended in disaster however, when he flew her from Japan to New York in 1991 to tell he wanted to break up with her: ‘He was on the floor, on all fours, crying. Was it work, was it the drugs? I don’t know. He was like a broken man.

Just five years later, he took his own life in a hotel room after taking a cocktail of drugs. Kylie was at the funeral, where his then-lover Paula Yates is said to have put a gram of cocaine in his pocket as mourners paid respects to his open casket.

In 1991, Kylie enjoyed a brief fling with rocker Lenny Kravitz. 

From 1996 to 1998, Kylie enjoyed a romance with director Stéphane Sednaoui. Her hit track Breathe was written when the duo travelled to Tokyo together. 

Kylie dated model James Gooding from 1999 to 2002 but he later boasted of flying out to New York and cheating on her with model Sophie Dahl.

Kylie was said to be ‘furious’ when he did a tell-all interview about her. Other stars who had romances with Gooding also slammed him, with former girlfriend Martine McCutcheon describing him as ‘disgusting’.

She then dated French actor Olivier Martinez for five years before the couple called it quits in February 2007.

A joint statement released on behalf of the pair at the time read: ‘Olivier Martinez and Kylie Minogue have officially confirmed that they are no longer a couple. They have made it clear that the decision to go their separate ways was mutual and amicable. 

‘The media’s false accusations of disloyalty have saddened them both. The two remain very close friends.’

The separation came at the end of a tumultuous time for Kylie after she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The singer was forced to abandon her Showgirl world tour in May 2005, and did not resume it until November 2006.

The singer spoke of how her ‘incredible’ boyfriend of four years had helped her through the battle.

‘On particular dark days, I’d be lying on the bathroom floor wailing and he’d say, “OK, honey, you can cry for just five minutes, then I’m taking you on the bike for a ride around Paris”‘ she told Elle magazine in 2006.

‘So I’d howl a bit more and then I’d find myself thinking, “Hmm. Actually, a ride on the bike sounds pretty good”.’Olli was there all the time, helping with the practical stuff and being protective.’

At the time she denied reports the couple were planning to marry. ‘I understand the excitement at the prospect of a wedding, but we’re simply happy together and getting on with life,’ she said.

In 2008, Kylie began dating model Andrés Velencoso after they met while filming an advert for her perfume range in 2008. 

Things ended in 2013, when Kylie terminated their five-year relationship and cited the pressures of their conflicting work schedules as the reason for the split.

Her representative confirmed the break-up to The Sun On Sunday, insisting at the time they were still on good terms.

Friends later said her increased workload had led to them spending less time together over months leading up to the split.

‘Kylie and Andrés haven’t been spending much time together because she’s been holed up in the studio in LA working on her new album,’ said a source. ‘He’s also been trying to carve out an acting career for himself.

‘When she signed up for The Voice they knew they couldn’t cope with the long distance pressures the job would put on them.’

The news came only 12-months after Kylie said of her then-boyfriend: ‘He’s the one. Sound the alarm, four years. I think I’m pretty settled’.

In 2015, Kylie met British actor Joshua Sasse, who was 28 at the time. They became engaged the following year before splitting in 2017. 

In 2018, Kylie spoke with Red Magazine about her split from Joshua, telling the publication she’d had to ‘rebuild herself physically and mentally’ after the break-up.

She later told The Sunday Times the split had caused her to have a ‘nervous breakdown’. At the time of their split , it was reported that Kylie had suspected Joshua was cheating on her with actress Marta Milans, but this was never confirmed.