Gaten Matarazzo Opens Up About His 8-Year Relationship with Elizabeth Yu
Most Hollywood relationships don't survive a single awards season. Gaten Matarazzo's has survived eight years, two acting careers, constant travel, and the particular pressures that come with growing up famous. The 23-year-old Stranger Things star sat down with Chelsea Handler on her podcast Dear Chelsea in early May 2026 to talk candidly about what makes his relationship with actress Elizabeth Yu work — and the answer turns out to be more grounded than most celebrity relationship advice tends to be.
According to The News International, Matarazzo credits two things above everything else: communication and the ability to thrive through distance. Neither of those is a revelation on its own, but the specifics of how this couple navigates them — starting from age 15, with full public scrutiny attached — tells a more interesting story.
Who Is Gaten Matarazzo? A Quick Profile
Matarazzo rose to prominence playing Dustin Henderson on Netflix's Stranger Things, a role he's held since the show's debut in 2016. He was around 13 years old when filming began. Now 23, he has grown up almost entirely on screen, which makes his personal life a subject of natural public curiosity.
Beyond acting, Matarazzo has been open about living with cleidocranial dysplasia, a rare condition affecting bone and teeth development. Far from hiding it, he helped raise awareness for it and incorporated the condition into his Stranger Things character. That kind of directness — addressing difficult things head-on — appears to extend into his personal relationships as well.
His appearance on Dear Chelsea in May 2026 was notable not just for the relationship details he shared, but for how matter-of-factly he discussed the mechanics of a long-term relationship. There was no performative gushing, no vague platitudes. He talked about the actual work involved.
Elizabeth Yu: The Other Half of the Equation
Elizabeth Yu is not simply "Gaten Matarazzo's girlfriend." She's an actress building her own career on her own terms, and that distinction matters to how the couple functions.
Yu made her notable acting debut in Somewhere in Queens (2022), a film directed by Ray Romano that earned strong critical reviews for its warmth and authenticity. She's also appeared in the show Black Spines. Significantly, reports indicate that Yu began seriously auditioning for acting roles around the same time Stranger Things season 2 premiered on Netflix in 2017 — meaning she was pursuing her own path in parallel to, not because of, Matarazzo's rising profile.
That parallel ambition is probably one of the underrated reasons the relationship has lasted. When both people in a couple understand what it means to chase an acting career — the auditions, the rejection, the irregular schedules, the location demands — there's a built-in empathy that couples with mismatched careers often lack.
How They Started: Dating at 15 in the Spotlight
Matarazzo and Yu began dating in 2018, when both were 15 years old. To put that in context: this was roughly one year after Stranger Things season 2 had dropped, when Matarazzo's public profile was climbing rapidly. Teen relationships under normal circumstances are already high-stakes emotionally. Teen relationships where one person is a recognizable face from a globally streamed show introduce a different category of pressure.
They've now been together for eight years. That's longer than many marriages. It spans the entirety of their late teens and early twenties — the period when most people's values, ambitions, and identities shift most dramatically. The fact that both of them appear to have grown together rather than apart through that period says something real about the relationship's foundation.
Coverage from MSN notes that the couple does not currently live together, but they do live very close to one another in the same city, maintaining separate spaces while staying in the same orbit. It's a living arrangement that reflects a mature approach to independence within a committed relationship — something you rarely see in couples who started dating as teenagers.
The Two Pillars: Communication and Thriving Through Distance
On Dear Chelsea, Matarazzo was specific about what makes the relationship sustainable. The two factors he cited were communication and what he described as "thriving through distance."
The communication piece is almost universally cited in relationship advice, but Matarazzo's framing is worth examining. He's not talking about simply keeping in touch while on location — he's talking about building a relationship model where honest conversation is the default, not the fallback when things go wrong. Starting at 15, with both people still figuring out who they are, that kind of communication habit either gets established early or it doesn't develop at all.
The distance element is particularly relevant given both of their careers. Acting work — especially at the level Matarazzo operates — means extended periods on set in other cities or countries. According to the Times of India, the couple travels frequently for work but returns to the same home base city. That's a deliberate structural choice — maintaining a shared anchor point even when professional obligations pull them in different directions.
"Thriving through distance" rather than merely surviving it is a meaningful distinction. Surviving distance means enduring it until you're back together. Thriving through it means using that time productively, maintaining individual growth, and not allowing the relationship to become defined by anxiety about physical separation. It requires a level of security in the relationship that most couples — of any age — take years to build.
The couple began dating at 15 and has navigated nearly a decade of career growth, public scrutiny, and long-distance travel — while maintaining separate living spaces just around the corner from each other.
What Chelsea Handler's Podcast Reveals About the Interview Dynamic
The choice to discuss his relationship on Dear Chelsea specifically is worth noting. Handler's podcast is known for direct, often irreverent conversations that push past PR-speak. Guests who appear on it tend to be more candid than they would be in a more traditional entertainment interview format.
Matarazzo's willingness to get specific — not just saying "communication is key" in the abstract but actually discussing the logistics of how he and Yu manage their lives — reflects a comfort with transparency that aligns with how he's approached other personal topics throughout his public life. The podcast appearance, published around May 1-2, 2026, generated immediate pickup because the advice felt genuine rather than rehearsed.
It also reflects a broader cultural moment where young men talking openly about relationship dynamics and emotional communication is increasingly seen as a strength rather than something to downplay. Matarazzo isn't performing sensitivity here — he's describing a functional approach to a real long-term relationship with practical specifics attached.
Analysis: Why This Story Resonates Beyond Celebrity Gossip
The sustained interest in Matarazzo and Yu's relationship isn't really about celebrity gossip. It's about something people genuinely want to understand: how do two young people, navigating demanding creative careers in a very public environment, maintain a stable and apparently healthy relationship over nearly a decade?
The answer Matarazzo offers — communication, productive distance, shared home base, separate living spaces, mutual career respect — is notable because it doesn't fit the conventional romantic narrative. There's no story here about being inseparable or about one person sacrificing their ambitions for the relationship. The picture that emerges is of two people who have deliberately designed a relationship architecture that works for their actual lives, not a hypothetical version of them.
That's worth paying attention to. The entertainment industry has a brutal track record with young couples. The ones that last tend to have exactly the qualities Matarazzo describes: communication as infrastructure, not just crisis management; distance treated as a manageable feature rather than an existential threat; and a structure that preserves individual identity within the partnership.
The fact that they started at 15 and have grown into this arrangement rather than having it handed to them is arguably the most impressive part. Most 15-year-olds — most adults, for that matter — don't have the frameworks Matarazzo describes. They developed them over time, apparently together.
Additional reporting on the interview underscores that neither Matarazzo nor Yu appears to have subordinated their professional identity to the relationship — Yu's career is her own, Matarazzo's is his own, and the relationship exists alongside both rather than as the central organizing fact of either person's life.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long have Gaten Matarazzo and Elizabeth Yu been together?
Matarazzo and Yu have been dating for eight years, having started their relationship in 2018 when both were 15 years old. As of 2026, they remain together, making theirs one of the longer-running relationships in the young Hollywood set.
Do Gaten Matarazzo and Elizabeth Yu live together?
No. The couple maintains separate living spaces but lives close to each other in the same city. This arrangement appears to be a deliberate choice that allows both to maintain independence while staying in the same environment. They travel frequently for work but return to this shared home base.
What is Elizabeth Yu known for?
Elizabeth Yu is an actress best known for her role in Somewhere in Queens (2022), a film directed and co-starring Ray Romano that received positive critical attention. She has also appeared in the show Black Spines. Yu began pursuing acting professionally around the time Stranger Things season 2 premiered, establishing her own career trajectory independently of Matarazzo's.
What does Gaten Matarazzo say is the secret to his relationship?
Speaking on Chelsea Handler's Dear Chelsea podcast in May 2026, Matarazzo cited two main factors: strong communication and the ability to thrive — not just survive — through periods of distance. He spoke about both partners traveling for work but returning to a shared home base city, and about maintaining separate living spaces in close proximity to each other.
What is Gaten Matarazzo doing now in 2026?
Matarazzo, 23, continues to be associated with the Stranger Things franchise on Netflix, where he has played Dustin Henderson since the show's debut. He has been making media appearances and podcast appearances discussing his personal life and career, including his May 2026 interview on Dear Chelsea with Chelsea Handler.
Conclusion
Gaten Matarazzo's relationship with Elizabeth Yu has become a topic of genuine interest because it offers something rare in celebrity coverage: an actual framework, honestly described, for how a long-term relationship can function alongside demanding careers. The advice he shared on Dear Chelsea — communicate consistently, thrive through distance, maintain a shared anchor, respect your partner's independent career — isn't revolutionary in theory. What makes it noteworthy is that it appears to describe a relationship that has genuinely worked for eight years, starting from adolescence, through one of the most professionally turbulent decades two young actors could navigate.
Yu's emerging career adds another layer to the story. She isn't a passive figure in a celebrity relationship — she's a working actress with her own credits and her own trajectory. The couple's structure, with separate spaces in the same city and a mutual understanding of what career demands look like, seems designed around that reality rather than despite it.
Whether their approach translates broadly to other couples is a secondary question. The more interesting observation is that two people who started dating at 15, in an industry that routinely destroys relationships, apparently figured out something functional before most of their peers figured out their first serious relationship at all. That's worth more than a headline.
