On 12 December 2015, Van Haver was secretly married to Coralie Barbier by well-known Catholic priest Guy Gilbert, in a private ceremony held in Mechelen. Since 2018 he has been showing himself in public again. In an interview in 2017, he stated that he still suffers from panic attacks and initially left open whether he would ever be able to make music professionally again. Since then Stromae has avoided public appearances. Due to all of this, he had to cancel a tour through Africa. Due to this, he experienced a lot of suicidal thoughts and once explained that one night, he was on the brink of suicide and explains that without the help of his brother, he would have been dead. However, Paul experienced the serious side effects which are depression, anxiety or as far, hallucinations. In 2015, Paul was prescribed to take Lariam (Mefloquine), a medication used to prevent malaria. His early influences included Belgian singer-songwriter Jacques Brel, Cuban son, and Congolese rumba.
He formed a small rap group with his friends while still in school. He attended the Sacré-coeur de Jette, a Jesuit school in Jette, the Collège Saint-Paul in Godinne, after failing in the public school system at the age of sixteen. He and his siblings were raised by their mother, as his father, a prominent architect, was killed during the 1994 Rwandan genocide, while visiting his family. Paul Van Haver was born in Brussels and raised in the city's Laeken district, to a Rwandan Tutsi father, Pierre Rutare, and a Belgian Flemish mother, Miranda Van Haver.