A Deep Dive Into Aaron Rodgers and Shailene Woodley’s Relationship Timeline and Breakup

In February 2021, Shailene Woodley uttered a line that will go down in pop culture history. “I never thought I’d be engaged with somebody who threw balls for a living,” she told Jimmy Fallon during a virtual appearance on The Tonight Show. The man in question was her then-fiancé, Aaron Rodgers. Yes, that Aaron Rodgers. The Green Bay Packers quarterback who was a Super Bowl MVP. Did I have to look up that stat? Maybe. I guess Shailene and I have something in common (we don’t know that much about sports).You see, Shailene wasn’t starstruck over Aaron’s football abilities—nah, she just thought of him as a Jeopardy-loving nerd. So how did the hippie actress end up engaged to a football legend before they eventually called it off and broke up? I’m so, so glad you asked. Let’s get into it (especially now that Aaron is here in 2026, claiming they broke up after Shailene wanted to sleep with someone else following their engagement…)Jump to:July 2020September 2020February 2021May 2021June 2021July 2021February 2022March 2022April 2022September 2024December 2024September 2026July 2020Let’s start at the beginning, shall we? A rep confirmed with Us Weekly that Aaron and Danica Patrick had broken up last summer. They met in 2012 at the ESPYS and started dating in 2018.That month, rumors started that Shai and Aaron were seeing each other. Sports gossip blogger Terez Owens wrote that they were spotted together in Lake Tahoe.September 2020Aaron appeared on The Pat McAfee Show, and while he didn’t say he was in a relationship, he did reference “changes” in his life.“I have just a new and increased love of life and I have made decisions and changes and habits that put me in a lot better headspace,” he said. “There’s just a lot of things that have come together in my life over the last few months that have really been enjoyable and reminded me, given me perspective in life and in football to view things through the most positive lens I possibly can.”February 2021We *finally* get confirmation that Shailene and Aaron are a bona fide couple. “2020 was definitely a crazy year filled with lots of change, growth, some amazing, memorable moments, 180 straight days of having my nose hair scraped, playing for very little fans or no stands the entire season,” Aaron said during a speech after accepting the 2020 AP Most Valuable Player Award. “I got engaged and I played some of the best football in my career.”He continued, “So I’d like to thank, first and foremost, my teammates for their support, their inspiration, protection, incredible play on the field…off the field, I’ve got a great group of people that support me, so I’d like to thank my team.”He didn’t name Shailene, but WE ALL KNEW.Then Shailene appeared on Fallon and spilled alllll the deets.“I mean, I’ve been reading that too [that I’m engaged to Aaron Rodgers], it’s kind of funny,” she began. “Yes, we are engaged, we are engaged. But for us, it’s not new news, you know, so it’s kind of funny, everybody right now is freaking out over it, and we’re like, yeah, we’ve been engaged for a while. Yeah, we got engaged a while ago. It’s been—he’s, first off, just a wonderful, incredible human being, but I never thought I’d be engaged to someone who threw balls for a living. I never thought as a little girl, Yeah. I’m going to marry someone who throws balls, yeah! But he’s really just so good at it, and I’m really impressed. He can throw fast balls, he can throw slow balls, high balls, low balls. When I first met him, I think my dog, like, pulled me aside and was like, ‘If you don’t date this dude, I will disown you as my mother because the three feet that I run with you when you throw a ball is nothing compared to the marathon I’m able to run with him.’”Iconic.May 2021Double date time! On May 1, Shailene and Aaron (Sharon? Ailene? More on that later…) attended the Kentucky Derby with their friends, including Miles Teller and his wife, Keleigh Teller. FYI: Miles and Shailene are frequent costars. They both appeared in The Spectacular Now and the Divergent franchise.Later that month, the couples went on vacation to Hawaii and many Instagrammable moments ensued.June 2021Shailene divulged more information about her relationship in a Shape cover story. “Starting a relationship where you immediately move in with someone—because it’s a pandemic and you can’t just get on a plane and go back and forth on weekends—taught us a lot about each other very quickly,” she said. “We jumped in headfirst and got some of the sticky bits out of the way early.”She continued, “I have the perspective that I would have met Aaron in any context, any space in time because I feel we were meant to be together.”July 2021As it turns out, Shailene and Aaron were keeping their engagement low-key for months. “When we announced that we were engaged, we wanted to do that only because we didn’t want someone else to do it before we did,” Shailene told the Hollywood Reporter in a cover story. “And we didn’t do it for months and months after we had become engaged.”She added, “But the reaction to it was really a lot, and so we were like, ‘Let’s just politely decline [to talk about the relationship] for a little while and live in our little bubble.’”February 2022Months later, things took a turn. A rep for Aaron told People that Aaron and Shailene called off their engagement and ended their relationship completely. The good news is it doesn’t seem like it was too messy or devastating.“It was an amicable split—it just wasn’t working,” the source told People. “They’re very different people with busy careers and there were obstacles that they couldn’t surmount. They will remain friendly; there’s no bad blood and no drama. It just didn’t work out for them.” The news of their breakup comes just about a year after their secret engagement.Less than two weeks after news broke that the couple had called off their engagement, however, Aaron and Shailene were spotted together in Los Angeles, spurring rumors of a reconciliation.While Shailene and Aaron have yet to personally address the current status of their relationship, sources close to the pair gave some hopeful updates.“Shailene and Aaron broke up after the two spent a lot of time apart and couldn’t make it work,” one source told Entertainment Tonight. “Aaron had told Shailene he’ll put more effort into the relationship and making her a priority. The two have been spending more time together recently and will see what the future holds.”Another insider told Us Weekly that Shailene and Aaron aren’t back together but that they *are* “talking things through and trying to keep things private” because even though they split, “their love for each other never went away.”“Things are different now, but they were definitely over,” the Us Weekly source added. “Now that Aaron is in [the] off season, he has more downtime and can focus more on a relationship. Shailene is understanding and open—she hasn’t shut the door completely or [she] would’ve never agreed to meet up with him.”March 2022Even though Shailene and Aaron kept “spending time together,” they were never “fully back on” at this time, explained a source to E! News. Instead, they were simply “testing the waters.”The source continued: “Since he’s been off, they have been able to take some time to work on their relationship and try to figure things out. They are going to continue trying to do that and see what happens.”April 2022After the last attempt at “testing the waters,” it now seemed very official that Shailene and Aaron were truly over. As of April 2022, the two were definitely “not together,” according to what a source told E! News. “Shailene tried to give it another shot and was spending time with Aaron,” continued the source. “But she quickly saw that everything was on his terms and nothing was going to change. There was no reason to continue, and she’s done with it again.”September 2024During an interview with Bustle, Shailene revealed how she’s changed since experiencing “a broken heart.” As she explained, “I give all of myself. I used to be a person who, if you crossed me and disrespected that, would continue to give and give. And now you cross me, I respectfully go, 'Thank you so much for that information. Have a beautiful life. I wish you well.’ Not interested.”December 2024Though it still wasn’t clear *exactly* why the two broke up, Shailene hinted that things didn’t end well during an interview with Outside. Early in the interview, she noted, “I haven’t shared much about my relationship with Aaron because it always makes me cry. It was not right. But it was beautiful.”Later, however, she alluded to a “really awful, traumatic thing” happening in early 2022, which was presumably when the two decided to end their engagement. “I felt like I lost my soul, my self, my happiness, my joy,” she said. According to her, she chose to remain in the “toxic situation” because she was empathizing with “someone else” (though she doesn’t specifically name Aaron as that someone else).September 2026Aaron made an appearance on the Not Just Football podcast, where he finally broke his silence on his Shailene split…by claiming that she asked to sleep with someone else shortly after they got engaged.“I date Shailene, I propose and she says yes,” Aaron recalled. “She maybe felt like she was forced to make a decision; she could have said no. But not a couple of days after that, she tells me before we get married like, ‘I got to go fuck this guy.’”He continued, “’Cause her story is, I ruined her life and gave her crazy depression because I left her, but in actuality she told me that and took off the ring by March. I proposed in December, took off the ring by March, and we had a couple of times when we tried to get reunited and nothing ever happened, and there wasn’t even a relationship in ’22 to break off. She literally told me I don’t want to be with you.”He concluded with, “There’s just a lot of narratives out there that are just not true and they portray things a certain way because they can get away with it.” Well!!Shailene has yet to give her side of the story, so stand by for updates.