Mindy Kaling's Dating History Is Short as She Has Had Only 2 Public Relationships

Actress and producer Mindy Kaling likes to keep her personal life private, so much so that no one knows who the father(s) of her children are or if she has a man in her life.

Gossip columns and rags will never make headlines out of Mindy Kaling's dating history. The bubbly, funny, wildly talented beauty's love life is more closely guarded than Fort Knox.

Kaling is the mother of two children but has never revealed the father, and she always shows up at red-carpet events with her best friend. She is only known to have dated two men, and her current love life is a mystery.

Kaling was born June 24, 1979, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the oldest child of an architect and an OB/GYN from India. Her experience as the child of immigrants would inspire some of her more hilarious comedic writing.

Kaling's birth name is Mindy Chokalingam, but when she started doing stand-up comedy, she discovered that the MCs had trouble pronouncing her name, so she changed it to the "user-friendlier" Kaling.

Fans and colleagues hadn't even known Kaling was pregnant when she gave birth to her son Spencer.

Kaling first caught the eye of the industry as a student at Dartmouth when she and her friend Brenda Withers wrote and starred in a spoof of how Matt Damon and Ben Affleck supposedly wrote the script for the Oscar-winning "Good Will Hunting," titled "Matt&Ben."

The play was a surprise hit and opened the doors for Kaling as a writer, actress, and producer, leading to her debut as a director. "The Office" made her a household name; since then, her career has gone from strength to strength.

At 26, Kaling was the only female writer on "The Office's" team of 8, and she quickly proved her worth as a wholly original fresh voice in comedy.

Kaling is responsible for creating, writing, and producing "The Mindy Project," the mini-series "Four Weddings and a Funeral," the series "Never Have I Ever," and "The Sex Lives of College Girls." Kaling admits that she is often inspired by her own life to write but won't speak about her romances.

BJ Novak

Working on "The Office" brought writer, director, and comedian BJ Novak into Kaling's life. The two started writing and acting together and quickly started what Kaling describes as "never really dating, (...) never really not dating."

Kaling met Novak in 2005, and they have been inseparable ever since. The two are well matched as to talent, and they are always close whether or not they are dating. Kaling revealed:

"He is not my boyfriend, but he is not my best friend. I guess you could describe our relationship as a 'romantically charged camaraderie with loud arguments.'"

In a candid interview, Kaling admitted to Howard Stern that she'd been heartbroken when Novak broke up with her in 2007 when she was 24 but that she's moved on. Fifteen years after they met, Novak considers Kaling an essential person in his life, and the two accompany each other to red-carpet appearances.

Benjamin Nugent

Kaling's passion for the written word seems to influence her taste in men. In 2008, Kaling started dating best-selling "American Nerd" author Benjamin Nugent. Like Novak, Nugent is a writer whose first name is also Benjamin. (BJ stands for Benjamin Joseph).

Nugent is both an acclaimed writer of short stories and books, as well as a journalist whose articles have been published in "The New York Times," "The Washington Post," "Time," and "GQ."

Nugent and Kaling are thought to have dated until 2012 and made several red-carpet appearances together, but little is known about their relationship or when or why they broke up — Another Mindy Kaling mystery.

Is Mindy Kaling Dating Anyone Now?

Since breaking up with Nugent after a four-year relationship in 2012, Kaling hasn't officially dated anyone. She always takes Novak along when she needs a +1, but Kaling hasn't been romantically linked to anyone.

Of course, that doesn't mean she hasn't been having a sizzling romance or two. After all, she has given birth to two gorgeous children, but she refuses to discuss who the father or fathers are.

As far as anyone knows, Kaling is a single mom who spends her date nights at home with her kids -- or in the company of her best friend, BJ Novak. Kaling has not identified her children's dad, but she did say it's not Novak.

Mindy Kaling's Motherhood

Kaling was 38 when she announced she was pregnant in an interview in 2017. At the time, Kaling wasn't known to be in a relationship, and she did not name her baby's father.

On December 15, 2017, Kaling gave birth to a daughter, Katherine Swati, and three years later, she dropped a bombshell on "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert": she had a second child.

Fans and colleagues hadn't even known Kaling was pregnant when she gave birth to her son Spencer in September 2020. Once again, people speculated that BJ Novak was the dad, but Kaling denied it. Novak, she revealed, is her children's godfather.

Shortly after her son's second birthday, Kaling opened up to Meghan Markle about the stigma that is still attached to being a single mother in the Indian community. She said:

"There’s a whole Indian angle on it, too, to choose to have your own children by yourself. You start thinking, like, 'OK, what do my relatives in India think about this? Is this causing tremendous shame upon our family?'"

Kaling relies on the support of her father and stepmother, as well as a nanny, to cope with the difficulties of being a working single mom with a demanding career. Her greatest sadness is that her mother, Swati, who passed away in 2012 from cancer, never met her beautiful grandchildren.