Lana Del Rey Is Maybe Not Dating the Louisiana Airboat Captain

It sounded like the love story of a lifetime: A burnt-out chemical plant worker takes control of his life, quits his job, and gets his boating license to dedicate his life to airboating celebrities down Louisiana’s bayous meets a big, big star who, five months away from releasing her 6th studio album that’ll end up establishing her as “one of America’s greatest living songwriters,” is looking for escape from the dark, stuffy recording studios in New York and LA. You could say fate brought her to Arthur’s Air Boat Tours that day in March 2019, because one short airboat ride down Bayou des Allemands later and, bam, they found love in the Bayou State.

Unfortunately, like all great love stories, this one was too good to be true.

We’re talking, of course, about Lana Del Rey and her rumored boyfriend, Louisiana airboat captain Jeremy Dufrene. Except Del Rey kind of just put those rumors to rest.

Over the past couple of weeks, the two made headlines after they were seen holding hands backstage at the Reading Festival, and then again at a bar in Harrods in London. Social media quickly confirmed that the mystery man was, in fact, the airboat captain Del Rey Instagrammed in 2019. Del Rey also tagged him in the caption of an Instagram from May, writing, “Family w my guy @jeremy.dufrene,” though he wasn’t pictured. Meanwhile, a Twitter user who seems to run a pop star stan account started tweeting that Dufrene was her dad and that he recently left her mom—which seemed suspicious but not implausible. All of it, actually, felt perfectly in character for Del Rey, who recently dated a cop, promoted an album with one single billboard in her ex-cop’s hometown, and randomly worked a shift at an Alabama Waffle House.

But on Saturday, Del Rey commented on Just N Life’s Instagram about her rumored relationship, simply writing, “No.” She then left a second comment on the post that read, “Also, that’s not his daughter on Twitter.” Both updates devastating.

The original Instagram caption on @Justnlife’s post read: “Lana’s new beau, is an alligator tour guide… who also recently separated from his wife. Jeremy’s daughter took to Twitter/X to share that she found out about her dad’s new romance with the stunning singer through social media and her thoughts on everything unfolding,” but has since been edited to say that Del Rey addressed those rumors in their comments. Just N Life, which seems to be a lifestyle & entertainment site, has just 424 followers on Instagram—nothing wrong with that, but I am curious how Del Rey found their Instagram post among all the Instagram posts.

So, despite the damning photographic evidence, it seems they aren’t dating—unless Dufrene got spooked by the avalanche of media attention and Del Rey is just trying to fight off all of us vultures. Comment if we’re warm, Lana!

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