David Byrne is engaged!
The former Talking Heads frontman, 73, subtly announced his engagement to Mala Gaonkar, 55, when he referred to her as his “fiancée” during an interview with The Times, which was published on Saturday, Aug. 16.
While discussing his upcoming Sept. 5 album Who Is The Sky? and the origin of its ninth track, “Moisturizing Thing,” Byrne let slip his new relationship status.
“My fiancée will sometimes come at me with greasy hands, ready to smear my face. And at one point I thought, ‘What if I wake up and really looked younger?’ ” the musician told the outlet. “But there’s a message, too. About how people judge us by the way we look. You learn a lesson you didn’t expect at the start.”
Byrne and Gaonkar live together in New York, per The Times.
PEOPLE reached out to Byrne’s representatives for comment.
Back in 2016, Gaonkar collaborated with Byrne to write an immersive theater performance for the Stanford Arts Institute. They worked together again in Denver on another theatrical experience in 2022.