Eileen Kelly defends 33-year age gap with Chili Peppers' Anthony Kiedis

Anthony Robledo, USA TODAY Sat, April 25, 2026 at 7:50 PM UTC

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Eileen Kelly attends a screening for "The Curse" on Nov. 8, 2023, in West Hollywood, California.

When it comes to her 33-year age gap relationship with Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis, Eileen Kelly has heard it all.

The sex educator and podcaster, 30, opened up about the age difference in a candid Vogue essay titled "My Boyfriend Is Double My Age," published April 21. Though she did not name the "Californication" singer, 63, in the piece, Kelly has been spotted with him publicly on several occasions since November, according to E! News and People.

In the essay, she shared that for the first time, she is dating someone "significantly older" than her, "which is either alarming or impressive, depending on who you ask." Overall, she is loving the experience, arguing that older men have had time to get their priorities straight, quipping, "Sometimes I joke with friends that I’ve been missing out my whole life."

Anthony Kiedis of Red Hot Chili Peppers performs onstage at The Kia Forum on January 30, 2025, in Inglewood, California.

"My much older boyfriend seems genuinely excited to be with me — not like he’s biding his time before he can swipe for someone better," she wrote, adding that "he is fully aware" of how "lucky" he is.

The rockstar's girlfriend revealed that the pair met at a birthday party after she returned from a solo trip to Hawaii and bonded over how the man had owned a house in the state for over 20 years. The two joked about how they possibly crossed paths on "the same stretch of sand, or stood in line next to each other at the same health food store" before identifying an "invisible string connecting us."

"The age gap didn’t register at first. I had met someone interesting and magnetic; if anything, I assumed we’d just become friends," she wrote. Soon, they exchanged numbers and made plans to get coffee before establishing a strong connection.

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Eileen Kelly condemns 'daddy issues' and 'gold digger' stigmas

The "Going Mental" podcast host then called out the stigmas she said exist toward people in age-gap relationships.

"An older man is reflexively labeled 'creepy' and 'gross,' while the woman 'must have daddy issues' or must be a gold-digger. Is it really so difficult to imagine that connection can exist across generations, and that two people of different ages can find something real in each other?" she wrote.

Kelly emphasized that she has her own money, career and home, allowing her to genuinely love her boyfriend while not being "at risk of losing everything if we break up." She clarified that if she were "18, or even 21, the scales would be weighted far differently."

"Power is annoyingly slippery. There’s the obvious kind: money, whose name is on the lease. And then there’s emotional intelligence. Knowing exactly when to offer an apology and when to withhold one. The ability to steer a conversation so smoothly the other person doesn’t realize it’s happened," she added. "All of these things can create an imbalance that isn’t exclusive to relationships with large age gaps, but is easier to identify there."

Since making public appearances together, Kelly said the pair have received "unsolicited" and "incredibly awkward" remarks about their age gap, with Kelly being asked if Kiedis is her father.

"We have a tendency to interrogate the unusual and excuse or explain away everything else," she argued. "But the reality is comparatively unremarkable. From the inside, we’re mostly just two people doing the ongoing, unremarkable work of moving through life together."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Eileen Kelly defends singer Anthony Kiedis being twice her age

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