tech entrepreneur brian johnson – who gained attention for her ambitious anti-aging routine, which involves a strict dietexercise regimen, and supplements – has announced his three-year relationship with Kate Tolo, 30, in an extremely personal and romantic post. Brian, 48, said he had ‘waited desperately for 25 years for a partnership like this’. Read this also Brian Johnson’s $2 million a year anti-aging routine includes 40 supplements, 18-hour fasting, no red light, and no eating after 11 p.m.
In a lengthy post shared on Instagram and He described their relationship as an instant ‘puzzle piece fit’, and compared their bond to the partnership of American Founding Father John Adams and his wife Abigail Adams.
Brian Johnson’s romantic post for girlfriend
He said: “Guys…I have a girlfriend. Now I know what you’re thinking…How is it possible that anyone would want to be with me? I understand where you’re coming from. I think the answer is: Her puzzle piece fits for me. In my early twenties, I read a biography of American Founding Father John Adams. The partnership between him and his wife Abigail was one of the great partnerships in American history; Intellectually matched, emotionally connected, and co-architects of something bigger than ourselves. I wanted what they had. But it was not within reach.”
In his post, Brian described a long and sometimes difficult journey to find a fulfilling relationship. She detailed her early ‘arranged Mormon marriage’, which ended after 13 years because, while functional, it lacked the intellectual and emotional connection she desired. He shared, “Years ago, I was married in a kind of arranged Mormon marriage. Can’t figure out how to explain it. We were functional, but we weren’t John and Abigail. We separated after thirteen years.”
Brian continued, “At the age of 34, after selling Braintree Venmo, and emerging from a mismatched marriage and the oppression of Mormonism, I decided to reinvent myself and find partnership. I met a woman in LA who became my first girlfriend. Coming from a safe background, I was unaware of the obvious warnings. I was dangerously naive. That relationship was resolved and a lawsuit followed. The experience was unsettling and made me wonder if I would ever be able to trust again. When I turned 44, I began to adjust to the possibility of life without a partnership.
meeting kate
Their lives changed when Kate, attracted by Brian’s work on the merging of humans and AI, joined his company Kernel. “Kate and I met at my brain interface company, Kernel. She discovered my work using neurotechnology to improve human well-being and merge humans and AI,” he said. Even though she dreamed of a career in fashion, she was drawn to what she thought of as the defining question of our times: how humans will successfully evolve with AI. We shared the same passion. The puzzle pieces fit instantly, as instantly as either of us had ever experienced.
He further added that what started as a discussion after work hours gradually deepened into a daily ritual, marked by an obvious, yet unspoken affection. Brian said: “Yet we maintained our professional boundaries. When we worked together on our first project, it was easy to get back and forth. She could imagine and feel what I couldn’t and vice versa. It helped that Kate and I both had a natural disposition for hard work. Our joy came from creating.”
‘Original, eccentric, completely his own’
Describing her and their relationship, Brian said, “Kate was dazzling. When I saw her about the office, I had butterflies in my stomach. Every day she would show up wearing some unexpected combination of colors, textures, styles, and accessories. Always tasteful, playful, and interesting. She didn’t chase fancy brands. Most of her clothes were from thrift stores. It wasn’t how she looked, but how her mind worked: original, eccentric, thorough. It was his art.”
“We both worked very hard and valued every second of the day. One evening around 6:30 she came to my office and we talked for hours. It was all business already. It was the first time we stepped into each other’s personal lives. My heart strings pulled but my mind held back. ‘We know we can’t trust again’, my mind said firmly. Our meeting after hours in my office became a daily ritual. My favorite of the day. Share. We’ll reminisce about work. And delve a little deeper into each other’s personal lives. I had recently started my new anti-aging project and one night Kate suggested to me that I should put the whole thing online to allow others to follow along. We worked together to build a website and put out a v1. We brainstormed what to call it, and decided on the ‘Project Blueprint,'” he said.
From colleagues to colleagues
The couple spent three years establishing the business as well as pursuing the new relationship. Brian, a 48-year-old American with three children, and Kate, a 30-year-old from completely different worlds, took the time to connect their lives, with Brian writing: “We were strangely from completely different worlds, but somehow the same person. Yet none of us dared to take the next step. We didn’t want to jeopardize our working relationship, and we remained deeply suspicious of each other. The combination of Kate growing to distrust everything and me still feeling the sting of the past relationship stirred us into a pot of anticipated disaster.,
He continued, “Very early on, whether we liked it or not, we became each other’s go-to person. We spent every moment together. Social events and weekends were still off because our relationship was professional. We were both secretly wondering, ‘Does the other person feel the same thing I’m feeling?’ After a year and a half of unspoken affection, unable to tolerate it anymore, one night I slowly blew up the balloon of inquiry. She confirmed that it was mutual.
He also said, “Yet, despite things being so new, neither of us wanted to make our relationship public. We needed time to settle down, mature, and assess whether this was short-term or long-term. I’m a 48-year-old American, raised Mormon, with three kids. She’s a 30-year-old Bosnian-Australian-American. It took time to bridge our worlds. In our years of knowing each other, the three of them have been in a relationship. All the while building a business and there have been times when we didn’t know if we would make it or not.
‘I trust Kate as much as I trust my mother’
Now, Brian describes their relationship as stable, positive and calm and says he trusts Kate ‘as much as his mother’. He said, “In the past year, we have found our flow. I trust Kate as much as I trust my mother. She knows how to build trust. She anticipates your anticipation and knows your reaction before you react. She is meticulous in the integrity of our relationship. She has also been instrumental in helping my father and I reconcile and navigate the contours of our relationship.”
He said, “Over the past few years, Blueprint and Don’t Die have become global phenomena. Kate is the unsung hero. She and I have been a work in progress since the beginning. She has proven to be an extraordinary executor and, despite her unconventional background, knows things intuitively. Her creativity always keeps me anticipating what she will say or come up with next. Our brains are so interconnected that life seems naked without her. Her story is one that needs to be told to others.” “It would be better to emulate its practices and capabilities.”
Brian reveals that despite her quiet nature, Kate has ‘ruthful ambition, piercing intelligence and delightful creativity’, yet is often mistaken for his assistant. He said: “What I find most impressive about Kate is her prudence and thoughtfulness. She looks ahead, behind and sideways. Relative to her, I feel short-sighted in my awareness of the world. She can see through others, like one can see an X-ray. Then she takes all the information and can package it into simple, understandable terms. In ways that allow everyone to win.”
She added, “Kate is soft-spoken, self-deprecating and reticent. These qualities conceal her ruthless ambition, piercing intelligence and delightful creativity. Give her five minutes and she will reshape your world. But most people don’t know to look. They assume she’s my assistant. It’s a huge loss because people are looking for what she has to offer.”
‘It’s better than I imagined’
The entrepreneur ended his heartfelt post with a powerful analogy, comparing Kate’s search to the arduous journey of Ernest Shackleton and his crew when they returned to land after being shipwrecked in the brutal Antarctic.
He shared: “Deep togetherness is a universal human longing. And while there are eight billion of us on this planet, most struggle to achieve it, including in relationships. It is the most fulfilling of human experiences and also the most elusive. The joy of being seen, appreciated, and loved, and offering the same to another. I wrote dozens of different sentences that try to feel what it is to want and struggle for deep togetherness. I deleted them all because someone also could not capture its emotional structure as a whole.”
Brian continued, “Then one day while exercising, I realized what it felt like: how explorer Ernest Shackleton and his crew must have felt to return to land after being shipwrecked and surviving 497 days in the brutal Antarctic. It’s a bit of a dramatic comparison, though, that I doubt many of you can relate to. After 25 years of wandering and searching, Kate feels as if she has come to me. Life sinks or swims based on the quality of our closest relationships. No amount of professional success can bridge the gaping hole of a bitter personal relationship.”
Brian also revealed that Kate has become fully integrated into his life, having created a family unit with his son Talmadge, who wisely models his search for a partner for him: “My son Talmadge, Kate and I are family. Nothing gives us more happiness than being together. Our conversations are fast, deep and rowdy. Family nourishes the soul, and we are nourished. As my son considers potential partners, he wisely makes them different from Kate.”
He continued, “At this point, Kate and I have become almost the same person. Our entire conversation is accompanied by the same look, sound, gesture or image. We freely come up with the same ideas and insights, which suggests to me that perhaps it is our joint effort to generate them. Our relationship is stable, positive and calm. I have wanted this my whole life and have waited anxiously for 25 years for it to arrive. It is better than I could have imagined. Lucky me, Got my Abigail Adams.”
