Type Elle Smith into a search engine and two different backstories appear — one rooted in Kentucky, another in Ohio — before you even reach the part about Miss USA. The Elle who matters is the one who won Miss USA 2021, a University of Kentucky graduate whose name keeps surfacing next to England captain LGBTQ+ outlet PinkNews. This profile separates what’s documented from what’s still rumor, including the reports linking the two that neither party has officially confirmed.
Full name: Ellen Elizabeth ‘Elle’ Smith · Born: June 19, 1998 (age 26) · Birthplace: Louisville, Kentucky, U.S. · Title: Miss USA 2021 · Profession: Journalist, television host, model · Instagram followers: 162K
Quick snapshot
- Relationship status: widely reported, not officially confirmed (PinkNews) (Entertainment Daily)
- TMZ reporter title not independently verified (Entertainment Daily)
- Some reports place her origins in Ohio, not Kentucky (Entertainment Daily) (Entertainment Daily)
- Birth date and birthplace lack independent primary record (pageant biographies) (Entertainment Daily)
- 2020: University of Kentucky degree (Infobae)
- 2021: The Miss Kentucky–Miss USA double (GOAL)
- 2025: Social posts and appearances with Williamson (PinkNews)
- Official word: the only thing that moves the romance from reported to confirmed (PinkNews)
- Career detail: expect the TMZ question to keep following her until a primary source answers it (Entertainment Daily)
- Name collision: other Elle Smiths will keep mixing into search results
Nine profile lines, one pattern: the details rooted in pageant and university records hold up, while the ones that travel through celebrity coverage — partner, birthplace, current employer — still carry question marks.
| Full name | Ellen Elizabeth Smith |
|---|---|
| Nickname | Elle |
| Born | June 19, 1998 |
| Birthplace | Louisville, Kentucky, USA |
| Height | 5 ft 11 in (1.80 m) |
| Title | Miss USA 2021 |
| Occupation | Journalist, model, television host |
| Partner | Leah Williamson (rumored) |
| @officiallesmith |
Is Leah Williamson in a relationship with Elle Smith?
- Leah Williamson is an England international and Arsenal defender who captained the Lionesses to the UEFA Women’s Euro 2022 title (GOAL)
- Smith and Williamson were publicly linked through social-media posts and shared appearances during 2025 (PinkNews)
- In March 2025, Smith posted a birthday message to Williamson reading “happy birthday my love x” (PinkNews)
- The public record — posts and appearances — stops short of an official confirmation (PinkNews)
The short answer is: likely, but nobody involved has said so on the record. PinkNews frames the link around social-media activity and shared appearances, while football outlet GOAL has gone further, running headlines that describe Smith as Williamson’s “model girlfriend.”
A four-word caption and a few shared appearances are enough to build a headline cycle, but they are not a confirmation — and the two people at the center have stayed quiet.
That’s the unusual part of this story: the coverage is consistent and repeated, but it rests on captions and photos rather than on a statement from either woman. In celebrity journalism, that usually means the relationship exists and the parties are protecting it — but “usually” isn’t a confirmation.
How long have Leah Williamson and Elle Smith been together?
- Public timeline: early 2025 onward (PinkNews)
The March 2025 birthday post is the earliest concrete marker in the cited coverage. Before that, the sources we reviewed don’t place the two together publicly. If the relationship started earlier, that timeline hasn’t been published.
The pattern: Smith’s public identity now runs on two tracks — her own journalism career and a romance narrative written mostly by sports and entertainment media, with the second track much louder. Until Smith or Williamson speaks, this question stays in the reported-but-not-confirmed column.
What is Elle Smith doing now?
- Available profiles describe her consistently as a journalist and model (Entertainment Daily)
- Entertainment Daily reports early on-air work at a regional Kentucky television station (Entertainment Daily)
- Active on Instagram and TikTok, with roughly 162K Instagram followers
Now, about that TMZ title. It shows up in recurring profiles, but entertainment site Entertainment Daily’s review of available search results couldn’t verify it — the outlet’s consistent description is “journalist and model,” not a TMZ staff position (Entertainment Daily). For anyone writing about Smith in 2025, “reporter” is safe; “TMZ reporter” needs a primary source that hasn’t surfaced yet.
A journalist’s employer is the most checkable fact in a biography — and right now the unverified TMZ label circulates faster than the verified parts of her record.
What is Elle Smith’s current job?
- Journalism and broadcast reporting, based on her Kentucky on-air experience (Entertainment Daily)
- Modeling work referenced in her public profile
- TMZ position: cited in some profiles, unverified in the records Entertainment Daily reviewed (Entertainment Daily)
The honest label is “journalist and model.” If a specific employer gets confirmed later, the verified record will expand — but a title repeated across the internet doesn’t become true by repetition.
What social media platforms is Elle Smith active on?
- Instagram: @officiallesmith, roughly 162K followers
- TikTok: active alongside her media work
Instagram is the verifiable anchor: the handle and follower count come from her public profile. Her TikTok presence is part of her public activity, though the cited sources don’t analyze it further.
The multiracial background is a consistent part of the pageant-era record; the friction only starts when search results mix in other women named Elle Smith.
The trade-off: the louder the romance coverage gets, the more her professional biography gets compressed into sidebar details. That’s exactly why the gap between “reporter” and “TMZ reporter” matters while it’s still cheap to correct.
What is Elle Smith’s ethnicity?
- Mother: African-American
- Father: Caucasian
- How she identifies: multiracial
That’s the description carried in her pageant-era profile. It’s also one of the details that gets lost when current search results lead with romance headlines instead of biography. The record is thin — no names, no family history beyond those two lines — but it’s consistent in the materials we used.
What is Elle Smith’s racial background?
- Multiracial — African-American and Caucasian, per her pageant profile
The pageant record uses “multiracial” as the umbrella term, and it’s the same term her public profiles carry.
What are Elle Smith’s parents’ ethnicities?
- Mother: African-American
- Father: Caucasian
That’s the full extent of the cited material — no names, no deeper family history. Anyone offering more detail is probably describing a different Elle Smith.
The pattern: the more the coverage chases the romance, the less attention is left for documentation — which is how a solid pageant profile turns into a muddled search result.
What is Elle Smith’s real name?
- Full name: Ellen Elizabeth Smith
- Known as: Elle
No stage-name mystery here — “Elle” is a natural short form of Ellen, and it’s the name attached to her pageant title and her social profiles. The real complication is the opposite: other people named Elle Smith appear in search results, including a screenwriter, and the cited material treats her as a different person from that Elle Smith.
Why does she go by Elle?
- Elle is a short form of Ellen
It’s the name on her Instagram handle (@officiallesmith) and the name on the Miss USA record.
Why this matters: name collisions are the quiet reason so many details about “Elle Smith” online are wrong. Before trusting a claim, check which Elle Smith the source is actually writing about.
How old is Elle Smith?
- Born: June 19, 1998
- Age: 26 as of 2024
- Zodiac: Gemini
The birthday comes from pageant biographies, and it’s consistent across the materials we used. Entertainment Daily’s search review, however, could not locate a primary birth record (Entertainment Daily) — so treat June 19, 1998 as the well-sourced biographical answer, not a documentary one. The birthplace has the same issue: pageant profiles say Louisville, Kentucky, while some search results point to Ohio (Entertainment Daily).
When is Elle Smith’s birthday?
- June 19, 1998
One line, consistent across the pageant record.
What is Elle Smith’s zodiac sign?
- Gemini (May 21 – June 20)
A June 19 birthday places her squarely in Gemini.
The catch: the age question is easy, the location question is not — and both trace back to the same missing primary records.
Elle Smith timeline
- — Graduated from the University of Kentucky (Argentine news site Infobae)
- — Won Miss Kentucky USA and then Miss USA 2021 (GOAL)
- — Represented the U.S. at Miss Universe, finishing in the top 10 (GOAL)
- — Early on-air reporting work at a regional Kentucky TV station, according to Entertainment Daily (celebrity site Entertainment Daily)
- — “happy birthday my love x”: birthday message to Williamson (PinkNews)
- — Publicly linked with Williamson through social posts and shared appearances (PinkNews)
The shape here is the real story: a few years of steady professional building — degree, titles, broadcast work — then a relationship that compressed her name into headlines. The next line on this list gets written by Smith and Williamson themselves.
Confirmed vs. unverified
The same search query returns a verified pageant record and unverified job titles within a single scroll — and the unverified half tends to be the one shared.
Confirmed
- Won Miss USA 2021 (GOAL)
- Graduated from the University of Kentucky in May 2020 (Infobae)
- Described as a journalist and model (Entertainment Daily)
- Publicly linked with Leah Williamson since 2025 (PinkNews)
- Williamson is England captain and Arsenal defender (GOAL)
Reported but unverified
- Official confirmation of the relationship (PinkNews)
- TMZ reporter title (Entertainment Daily)
- On-air reporting at a regional Kentucky TV station, according to Entertainment Daily (Entertainment Daily)
- Ohio birthplace and any primary birth record (Entertainment Daily)
- Identity overlap with a screenwriter named Elle Smith
- Net worth figures circulating online
The implication: with the available research carrying a low overall confidence level, the responsible read is to treat the pageant title and the degree as settled, the career as partly documented, and the relationship as real-but-unconfirmed.
Key quotes
The only direct words from Elle Smith in this entire story are four — and they’ve done more for her media profile than any press release could.
“happy birthday my love x”
Elle Smith, Instagram caption reported by LGBTQ+ outlet PinkNews
That caption, posted in March 2025, is the strongest piece of public evidence for the relationship — a rare glimpse of the private wording of a public figure, and the line every relationship article quotes.
“Leah Williamson jets off to New York to visit model girlfriend Elle Smith”
Headline from football news site GOAL
The headline captures how quickly the frame shifted: Smith went from “Miss USA winner and reporter” to “model girlfriend” in a single trip — the pageant title becoming the aside.
What this means: whoever controls the next headline — Smith, Williamson, or the outlets covering them — controls the direction of the story. Right now, the outlets are winning.
The takeaway
The record on Elle Smith is split, and that split is becoming the norm for public figures: the professional biography is thin but verifiable, the personal narrative loud but unconfirmed. The reliable facts — the University of Kentucky degree, the Miss USA crown, the public link to Williamson — are easy to find. Everything else depends on which source you’re reading and which Elle Smith it found. For Smith, the choice is clear: correct the record on her own terms now, or let headlines keep rewriting it for her.
Related reading: Leah Williamson jets off to New York to visit model girlfriend Elle Smith · Leah Williamson’s high life with model girlfriend Elle Smith
Frequently asked questions
Is Elle Smith married?
No public record or cited report says she’s married. The only relationship she’s widely linked to is with Leah Williamson, and that link isn’t officially confirmed either.
Does Elle Smith have children?
No reports of children appear in the available sources.
What is Elle Smith’s height?
Pageant profiles list her at 5 ft 11 in (1.80 m).
What is Elle Smith’s net worth?
Not publicly documented in the cited sources; figures circulating online are speculative.
How did Elle Smith become Miss USA?
She won Miss Kentucky USA in 2021 and then took the Miss USA title the same year (GOAL).
What is Elle Smith’s Instagram handle?
@officiallesmith, where she has roughly 162,000 followers.
Is Elle Smith related to Elle King?
No reported connection exists; the shared first name appears to be a coincidence.
The honest summary of this profile: the strongest facts about Elle Smith come from pageant and university records, the loudest headlines come from a relationship neither party has confirmed — and the gap between those two is where the confusion lives.
George Thompson is Senior Reporter at UrbanMixr.uk, covering breaking culture, lifestyle and general news stories across the UK.