'Knock at the Cabin' Star Jonathan Groff's Dating Life Is Full of Funny Anecdotes

We commend any actor who jumps from stage to screen, but almost no one has done it as seamlessly as Jonathan Groff, who remains a star in both mediums. He began his career in Spring Awakening as Melchior and eventually took over our televisions as Jesse St. James in Glee, opposite Lea Michele in both projects. Once Jonathan made his sexuality public, his dating life quickly followed suit.

Throughout the years, Jonathan has dated several high-profile actors and celebrities, some of whom he even starred alongside. Now that Jonathan is starring in M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin opposite fellow LGBTQ+ actor Ben Aldridge as husbands, we’re eager to learn a bit more about Jonathan’s dating history.

At first, while some fans may have speculated, no one knew about Jonathan’s private romantic life until he came out as gay in October 2009. During the National Equality March, a Broadway.com reporter straight-up asked Jonathan about his sexuality, and he then came out. He’s talked about his coming out story plenty since then and how difficult it was for him.

"Coming from a religious background surrounded by the Amish, I felt… ashamed of who I was," he said in HBO’s documentary, Spring Awakening: Those You’ve Known.

In fact, Lea Michele had a major crush on Jonathan before he came out. Their onstage characters had to fall in love, so it’s no surprise that those feelings carried over. So when Lea confronted him about this, she explained in the doc, “I just saw this look in his eyes... I realized in that moment, 'This is the end.' And I need to protect this. This is intense." From then on, they remained besties but have never actually dated.

In 2009, when Jonathan was just 24-years-old, he was dating Gavin Creel, who took him to the march on Washington, which is when his sexuality became public. Before this, however, he had a boyfriend for 3.5 years, who remains unnamed to this day. After leaving Spring Awakening, Jonathan traveled alone to Florence, where he journaled for the first time about his boyfriend.

“I knew in that moment I was going to come out of the closet,” he told FourTwoNine. “I came back home and came out to my family first. And then my friends. Then I broke up with that boyfriend and moved out of the apartment we were sharing as ‘roommates.’” However, dating Gavin helped Jonathan come out, although their relationship couldn’t last forever.

Like Jonathan, Gavin is a stage and screen actor known for starring in Hair and The Book of Mormon (on the West End), although he appeared in a couple of American Horror Stories episodes.

The best part about Jonathan’s dating history is that it reads like Ryan Murphy’s cast lists. From 2010 to 2013, Jonathan and American Horror Story star Zachary Quinto dated.

"I'm incredibly happy, I'm incredibly lucky," he told Out magazine (via Us Weekly) in 2012. "I found myself in a pattern of being attracted to people who were somehow unavailable, and what I realized was that I was protecting myself because I equated the idea of connection and love with trauma and death."

But in 2013, the high-profile couple split amicably. “Zach being away and filming was not easy on them," a source told Us Weekly at the time. "Now he's going to be in New York with his new play [The Glass Menagerie]. They really loved each other, so it wasn't an easy split… It just ran its course.”

By 2018, Jonathan had moved past his relationship with Zachary and was then happily dating choreographer Corey Baker. When discussing his return to the stage in Little Shop of Horrors with the New York Times, Jonathan discussed his relationship with Corey. Jonathan and Corey met while teaching at a musical theater summer camp in New Zealand, where Corey lives.

Jonathan also discussed their relationship on The Late Late Show with James Corden, joking about his mom *almost* ruined his chances with Corey. “Our initial dating was very cordial and very high school,” Jonathan told James. “So there was kissing, but then I would drop him off at his mom’s house. It was very old school. It built up a lot of nice tension that paid off later,” he hinted to an applauding audience.

Neither has publicly discussed their breakup in detail, but it’s been reported that they broke up in 2020. One Tumblr rumor suggested that in Jonathan’s April 2021 Penn State talk, he admitted to dating someone while he filmed in Berlin, but as far as we know, Jonathan is single… for now.

Knock at the Cabin releases in theaters everywhere on Feb. 3, 2023.