Just a few weeks after the rumor mill started to churn with questions over whether Patton Oswalt was dating Meredith Salenger, the couple has come out and confirmed its relationship.
Actually, Oswalt and Salenger have done a lot more than that:
They’ve gone ahead and gotten engaged!
An insider has confirmed this unexpected news to People Magazine.
It has been broken just under a month since Oswalt and Salenger walked the red carpet together for the Los Angeles premiere of Baby Driver.
Typically, of course the love life of Patton Oswalt would not be considered a big deal in celebrity gossip circles.
But the comedian suffered a personal tragedy about 15 months ago when wife Michelle McNamara died unexpectedly in her sleep, leaving the actor to care for their eight-year-old daughter, Alice Rigney.
Since that unimaginable event, Oswalt has been very open about his struggles to move on.
In August of last year, for example, he penned a personal essay that compared depression to grief.
“Depression is the tallest kid in the 4th grade, dinging rubber bands off the back of your head and feeling safe on the playground, knowing that no teacher is coming to help you,” Oswalt wrote on Facebook at the time, adding:
“But grief?
“Grief is Jason Statham holding that 4th grade bully’s head in a toilet and then f-cking the teacher you’ve got a crush on in front of the class.”
To be more unique and specific?
“Grief makes depression cower behind you and apologize for being such a dick,” Oswalt explained.
Oswalt and McNamara got married in 2005.
He said last summer that he was “face-down and frozen for weeks” after she passed away from an accidental overdose.
“It’s 102 days later and I can confidently say I have reached a point where I’m crawling,” Oswalt wrote in this same post. Which, objectively, is an improvement. Maybe 102 days later I’ll be walking.”
About a year later, thanks to Salenger, it certainly sounds as if the star is maybe even running.
“They met through mutual friend Martha Plimpton,” an insider tells People of the engaged twosome. “They started chatting as friends and it blossomed from there.”
Since making their public debut last month, Oswalt and Salenger have been candid about their feelings on social media.
“We are at “Dorky Disney T-shirt Relationship Level”, from which no one returns. GREAT CTHULHU WHAT HAVE WE DONE?!?” Oswalt wrote in response to Meredith sharing the following snapshot of the couple:
Salenger also posted a picture of Oswalt on a beach in California, flexing whatever muscles he has in his arms.
“The love of my life,” she wrote as a caption, referring to Oswalt also as “my funny hunny.”
Replied Oswalt on Twitter: I prefer “clown who’s down” but whatever.
Meredith Salenger is a Harvard-educated actress.
She received her first major break in the industry at age 15 in Disney’s The Journey of Natty Gan.
She has credits in a number of television shows and movies; including Lake Placid, Hollywood Heights and voiceover work for cartoons like Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
We wish her and Patton Oswalt nothing but the very best.