Last fall, amid conflicting reports that Kendall Jenner and NBA star Ben Simmons were either getting more serious or taking a breather as a couple, tabloids in both New Zealand and Ben's native Australia reported an engagement was on the horizon for the two.
GossipCop debunked the stories at the time. Eight months later, though, things are looking a bit more serious for the supermodel and 76ers player.
Kendall, 23, covers the June edition of Vogue Australia, and the angle of the accompanying feature is pretty heavily tilted towards her romance with Ben, also 23, who grew up in Melbourne (his father, Dave Simmons, is an American who played pro basketball in Australia; Ben has dual citizenship).
After noting that Kendall streamed her man's game while getting her hair and makeup done for the cover shoot and FaceTimed Ben before the interview, the Vogue interviewer wonders if she's thinking about marriage when it comes to Ben.
"Maybe. Definitely not now, but maybe one day," she says.
Kendall also explains why she tends to keep her romantic life to herself.
. "I got a glimpse of how my sisters dealt with [the attention] and it's cool to learn from that," she says.
"For me, a lot of things are very special and very sacred, like my friends and relationships, and I personally think that bringing things into the public makes everything so much messier. I'm very young and right now I feel like relationships aren't always super-certain and I don't want to bring too much attention to something if you don't really know long term [what it's going to be]."
Kendall adds: "A relationship is only meant to be between two people, and the second you make it the world's business is when it starts messing with the two people mentally. Like once everyone is let in, you're letting all these opinions into your relationships, and I don't think that's fair."
In spite of having been photographed out on the town with Ben and attending his games for months, Kendall managed to avoid confirming the two were dating for a long while — until she appeared on "Ellen" in February.
Asked how long they'd been together, she just smiled and said, "for a bit now," leaving the start of their relationship up for debate.
And maybe she wasn't keeping track. As she told Vogue when the question of a timeline for life goals came up, she's not one to force anything like marriage on herself because of age.
"I feel like once you do [that], it's just completely ingenuine, and you think that you have to be in a certain place when you don't have to be," she says.
"Everyone has their own path and their own way of letting the cards fall. Your 20s are for messing up and figuring it out."