Paris Jackson has spent weeks fielding headlines about her broken engagement to Justin Long, and she’s finally telling the story on her own terms. Appearing on the August 12 episode of Call Her Daddy, the 28-year-old musician got candid with host Alex Cooper about walking away from the relationship, and about a much earlier engagement she’s never really discussed.
Jackson previously brushed off paparazzi photos of her in tears as simple breakup tears, without confirming what the breakup actually was. That changed on Wednesday‘s episode, where she laid out the full timeline of both her failed engagements, starting with one that fans didn’t even know existed.
Paris Jackson Opens Up About Ending Her Second Engagement
Jackson didn’t shy away from explaining her mindset once Cooper pressed her on the split.
“It was a choice that I needed to make to be happy,” Jackson said, addressing the split head on. She admitted this wasn’t her first time walking away from an engagement, but the circumstances were very different this time around.
Jackson and Long started dating in 2022 after they met backstage on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. He is a producer, mixer, and music engineer from California who has worked with Paris behind the scenes at her shows for several years. The pair got engaged in December 2024 before calling it off roughly three years into the relationship, in the summer of 2025.
Looking back at her secret first engagement, Jackson said, “I don’t know if you could count the first one. It was real to me, even though we were strung out on drugs, and the ring was one that he bought with my money without me knowing. It was still like the love was so real for me in that first one.”
The details about Jackson’s first engagement remain far less public. She didn’t name the person she was secretly engaged to, but before Justin, she dated her bandmate, Gabriel Glenn, whom she split from in 2021 after two years together.
It’s unclear whether Glenn is connected to the undisclosed first engagement or whether that chapter involves someone else entirely, but per Jackson, the love was real. She didn’t even rush into the engagement or take it lightly. But fate had different plans.
“No, it wasn’t that casual,” Jackson explained. “It was very like, you know, there were times where I did try and end it, but there is this little voice being like, what if. However long down the line, this is a voice that a lot of us have, of if I had just hung in there a little bit longer, it would’ve gotten better.”
Ultimately, Jackson said she has to trust her gut completely before making a life-changing decision like this. “And so I’m the person that needs to be sure, really, really needs to be sure.”
For now, Jackson says she’s not in a rush to test that instinct again anytime soon.