Photo: Getty Images
Madelyn Cline shared a photo with Kelsea Ballerini on her Instagram story on Monday (February 2).
The actress and model, 28, tagged the country superstar, 32, in a photo of the two of them giggling and covering their faces. The selfie appears to indicate a supportive, amicable bond between the two women, despite previous rumors of drama between them.
Cline dated Outer Banks co-star Chase Stokes, 33, in 2020, and they broke up in late 2021. Ballerini started talking with Stokes after she slid into his DMs in December 2022, and they started dating the following month. Ballerini confirmed the relationship in an interview on Call Her Daddy, and in another appearance on that podcast, she said of Cline: “I met her, and I talked to her and she’s lovely, and I think she’s wildly talented. And I think the internet did its best to make it really weird, and it just didn’t work for them.” Likewise, Cline has publicly called Ballerini “gorgeous” and “stunning.” The pair have previously spoken highly of one another and denied speculation of a rift between them.
Cline’s photo with Ballerini arrives one day after the Patterns artist attended the 2026 Grammy Awards at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, California. Though she didn’t attend the event with Stokes, she spoke about him while catching up with Entertainment Tonight’s Nischelle Turner. The red carpet interview arrived months after Ballerini and Stokes split up after more than two years of dating. The couple confirmed on New Year’s Eve that they’d rekindled their relationship (in the midst of the breakup between Ballerini and Stokes, the country star released her EP, Mount Pleasant, with “Emerald City,” a track that many social media commenters speculated as about Cline. Stokes called out commenters on TikTok, telling them to “grow up”).
“It looked a lot more dramatic than it was. And that was quite the learning lesson for us,” Ballerini told Turner. “But he’s — I love him so much. We’ve been together for quite a while now, and done a lot of life together. And I love love, and I believe in it. And I also, I believe so much in finding the things that make you happy, and finding the things that you want to work on and figuring out when the rubber meets the road, how to make that work.”
In another interview, with E! Live from the Red Carpet, Ballerini hailed herself “a chronic oversharer,” and moving forward, “I'm reigning it in.”
Ballerini walked the red carpet in a stunning gown, which included a hidden tribute to her late dog, Dibs. Dibs “went to doggy heaven” last month, following a battle with an “inoperable cancer in his heart” that lasted more than a year. Ballerini spent about a decade with her beloved dog. Her Grammys gown included a heart on the inside with Dibs’ name in it.