Actors Kevin McHale and Austin P. McKenzie have been together for nearly a decade — but they’re in no rush to walk down the wedding aisle.
“Neither of us really, like, think about it,” McHale, 36, recently told Us Weekly exclusively at the Human Rights Campaign Gala at Los Angeles’ Fairmont Century Plaza about the possibility of getting married. “I want a ring [more] than the marriage.”
He added, “I think for me, I’m like, ‘It’s so good, like, if it ain’t broke.’ It’s good how it is and, you know, it works.”
McHale, best known for playing Artie Abrams on Fox’s Glee, met McKenzie, 31, in 2016 on the set of When We Rise and subsequently started dating.
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“[It’s been] almost nine years. I don’t know how — neither of us thought that was gonna happen,” McHale joked to Us before delivering his best relationship advice. “We have evolved. I think, for us, it’s recognizing that we are independent people first. You want the other person to be their fully realized self, but the communication through that to, like, check in with each other and not take that growth personally if people are moving in different directions. So, it’s a communication process, you know, the growth cycle of it all.”
According to McHale, part of being in love is wanting “to see [a partner] be their fully realized self.”
“You don’t know what someone’s gonna like or want to do in a year,” he stated. “[So,] it’s following that and allowing the other people to bloom.”
While McHale and McKenzie appear to be the picture-perfect example of romance in their multitude of Instagram portraits, they — like most couples — are not immune to difficult situations.
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“Austin is very good about not letting it rest until we have worked through it, where I’m like, ‘It’s not that big of a deal.’ I can brush things under the rug,” McHale told Us. “He’s like, ‘No, no, no, we’re not doing it,’ which is good. It keeps me in check. And then when we have wild things going on in our individual lives, we do hear each other as teammates and we step in, like, ‘Oh, I’m stressed out about this, this and this.’ Then, he steps up and helps me with things that I need. It’s nice to have somebody there to help.”
In addition to continually managing his relationship, McHale is also in the process of renovating his dream house.
“I renovated my house,” McHale gushed, adding thahe revamped the property purchased during his early years on Glee. “After 13 years, I was like, ‘I need to shake it up, like, the energy.’ It’s stagnant when you’re in the same place … and it’s been incredible. It was something about letting that place go that freed up so much other stuff.”
With one renovation completed, McHale is now in the “process of getting another house” to fix up.
“I love doing that,” he quipped. “It’ll be fun!”
With reporting by Sienna Leone
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