Every great love story needs a first scene. For EJAE and Sam Kim, it was a songwriting session in 2017 — two young musicians paired up to write, neither knowing the appointment would quietly rearrange both their lives. Nine years later, on Oct. 17 in Seoul, they married at her grandparents’ former home. To understand why that wedding means so much, you have to understand how long EJAE waited for everything — the career, the recognition, and the right moment to share her happiness.
The Trainee Years: A Dream Deferred
EJAE, born Kim Eun-jae in Seoul on Dec. 6, 1991, spent her early childhood in Fort Lee, New Jersey, before returning to Korea at eight. At 11, she signed on as a trainee at SM Entertainment, one of the most powerful agencies in K-pop, and gave the system nearly a decade of her life — the singing lessons, the evaluations, the waiting for a debut that never came.
In 2015, her contract ended. She was in her early twenties, considered too old by idol-industry standards, and suddenly free of the only dream she had ever organized her life around. She has described the split as heartbreaking, like a breakup. Many artists would have quit music entirely. EJAE went back to school — she had studied at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, graduating from its Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music — and started over on the other side of the glass: writing and producing songs for other people.
The Songwriter Era — and a Fateful Session
The reinvention worked. EJAE built a reputation as a writer with a rare melodic gift, co-writing the topline of Red Velvet’s “Psycho,” which topped Billboard’s World Digital Songs chart, and contributing to records by aespa, TWICE and LE SSERAFIM. Encouraged by family, she had taught herself production, determined to claim space in a side of the industry where women were scarce.
It was inside that songwriter era, in 2017, that a session was booked with a young producer named Sam Kim. The meeting was professional. It did not stay that way. The two became partners in every sense, and Kim remained beside her through years when her name appeared only in fine print — the album credits, never the marquee.
“Golden”: The Voice the World Couldn’t Ignore
The turning point arrived with an animated film. EJAE was hired to write for the soundtrack of KPop Demon Hunters and recorded most of the demo songs herself. Director Maggie Kang has said those demos helped get the movie greenlit — and the filmmakers then asked EJAE to become the official singing voice of Rumi, the film’s heroine and leader of the fictional girl group Huntrix.
The film became a sensation. Its soundtrack topped the Billboard 200; its songs at one point held four of the top five spots on the Billboard Global 200. And “Golden,” the soaring anthem EJAE co-wrote and performed — a song spanning an operatic three-octave range — hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and then swept awards season: Grammy, Golden Globe and the Academy Award for Best Original Song, with the film also taking Best Animated Feature.
One of the soundtrack’s most charming secrets involves Kim. The vocal arrangement for the climactic “What It Sounds Like” was recorded in EJAE’s Brooklyn apartment, and Kim’s voice is folded into its layers of harmony — the producer-boyfriend literally backing up the star before the world knew either of their names.
Fame, Kept at Arm’s Length
Through the explosion, the couple protected their privacy with unusual discipline. They had gotten engaged in the fall of 2023 — before the film, before the charts — yet the engagement stayed secret until EJAE casually posted photos of it on Instagram in January 2026. She has released solo singles (“In Another World,” “Time After Time”), signed with WME, performed “Golden” at the Oscars with Rei Ami and Audrey Nuna in a staging steeped in Korean traditional music, and told PEOPLE that Kim kept her “grounded” through all of it — that she cried telling him she could not have done it without him.
Building a Solo Name, Too
Fame from an animated film can be a strange, borrowed thing — the face the world loves belongs to a cartoon. EJAE has worked deliberately to convert Rumi’s spotlight into her own career. She announced her debut solo single, “In Another World,” in October 2025 and followed it with “Time After Time” in February 2026. She signed with powerhouse agency WME, made a surprise cameo alongside her Huntrix co-stars on Saturday Night Live, performed “Golden” live on The Tonight Show, and appeared as a surprise guest when Katseye played Coachella in 2026.
At her Seoul press conference this April — held to celebrate the film’s Oscar wins — she summed up the arc herself: from her bedroom in Brooklyn to the Academy Awards stage, with an Oscar in hand. It is the kind of sentence that sounds scripted until you remember the trainee years, the rejection, and the decade of writing hits for other people’s voices.
The Timeline at a Glance
2003 — EJAE, age 11, begins training at SM Entertainment. 2015 — Her contract ends without a debut; she pivots to songwriting. 2017 — A songwriting session pairs her with producer Sam Kim. They fall in love. 2019 — Her topline for Red Velvet’s “Psycho” tops Billboard’s World Digital Songs chart. Fall 2023 — EJAE and Kim get engaged — and tell almost no one. 2025 — KPop Demon Hunters explodes; “Golden” tops the Hot 100. January 2026 — EJAE quietly confirms the engagement on Instagram. 2026 awards season — “Golden” wins the Grammy, Golden Globe and Oscar. Oct. 17, 2026 — The couple marries in Seoul, at her grandparents’ former home.
The Wedding: Full Circle in a Seoul Garden
So when the wedding came, its shape was pure EJAE. Oct. 17, Seoul. A ceremony at Stage 28, where her grandparents once lived and where she wandered as a little girl with her grandfather — the actor and arts patron Shin Young-kyun. A traditional Paebaek ceremony and a welcome party at the Korean fusion restaurant Congdu50. A custom Danielle Frankel tulle gown with a bubble hem, worn with family heirloom jewelry.
The girl who was told, in effect, to wait her turn — who trained for a decade, was let go, and rebuilt herself song by song — married her songwriting-session sweetheart in her childhood garden, in the middle of the most golden year any songwriter could dream of. Some love stories are whirlwinds. This one is a harmony: two voices, started in a studio in 2017, still perfectly in tune.
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