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Who Has Minka Kelly Dated? Inside Her Relationships Over the Years from Taylor Kitsch to Dan Reynolds

Minka Kelly dated a number of stars before she found her match with Dan Reynolds.

The Friday Night Lights alum has been dating the Imagine Dragons frontman since 2022, and the pair have a “really happy, healthy relationship,” as Reynolds told PEOPLE in July 2024.

The singer even made a cameo in Kelly’s latest Netflix project, Ransom Canyon. “They just asked one day, ‘Do you think he’d play this character?’ And I just was like, ‘Let me ask him,’ ” she told PEOPLE in April 2025. “And he was such a good sport and down to play.”

Prior to Reynolds, Kelly dated several A-listers, including Wilmer Valderrama, Jesse Williams, Derek Jeter and Trevor Noah, among others. She also had an on-again, off-again relationship with her Friday Night Lights costar Taylor Kitsch while they filmed the show’s first two seasons.

In her debut memoir, Tell Me Everything, Kelly opened up about her complicated relationship with her late mother, Maureen, and how it affected her relationships as an adult.

“I’ve learned that I have operated in a lot of my relationships as a scared 16-year-old girl,” she told PEOPLE in April 2023. “Most of the time these relationships reveal the parts in us that need healing. … So I’m a work in progress.”

Here’s a look back at Minka Kelly’s dating history.

Donald Faison

From 2004 to 2005, Kelly dated Scrubs star Donald Faison. The pair’s relationship began shortly after Faison’s divorce from Lisa Askey, and he went on to marry CaCee Cobb in 2012.

Not much is known about the brief romance, but Kelly and Faison did make several red carpet appearances together, including at the 2005 Emmy Awards.

Taylor Kitsch

After landing her breakout role as Lyla Garrity on Friday Night Lights in 2007, Kelly began quietly dating her on-screen love interest, Taylor Kitsch, despite director Peter Berg’s advice to avoid an off-screen romance.

“[Berg] basically send, ‘Don’t f—— do it. It’s not a good idea and it always ends badly,’ ” Kelly recalled in her 2023 memoir Tell Me Everything, per Today. “He didn’t know he was too late. Or at least pretended he didn’t.”

Kelly went on to detail their “toxic” on-again, off-again relationship, writing in the book, “All the good feelings that had been present at the outset began to deteriorate.”

She continued, “I guess that’s just what happens when you work together on a show; it’s a lot of pressure, and filming scenes again and again with the same people can sometimes bring out aspects of personalities that are less than stellar.”

The actress noted that she and Kitsch “ended up getting back together and breaking up more times than [she] can count” before calling it quits for good. She added, “I loved being with him. It’s just that the good only lasted so long before our incompatibility reared its ugly head.”

The two ultimately broke up within a year. Today, Kelly is no longer in touch with Kitsch, she told PEOPLE in April 2023.

John Mayer

Kelly was linked to John Mayer after the two were spotted having dinner in Austin, Texas, in October 2007. They continued to spend time together for the next few months, including sitting courtside at a New York Knicks game that November.

By January 2008, Kelly and Mayer had split, though they remained “friends,” sources told PEOPLE at the time.

“Minka told a couple friends that she and John had broken up but she really didn’t want to tell anyone,” her friend told PEOPLE.