Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took a break between visiting Amazon union workers and endorsing progressive candidates to get engaged to her longtime partner Riley Roberts.
Ocasio-Cortez, 32, confirmed to Insider on Thursday that she and Roberts, who met while both were at Boston University, got engaged last month while visiting her parents’ home town in Puerto Rico.
She then wrote on Twitter: “It’s true! Thank you all for the well wishes.”
According to Insider, the pair were quiet about their relationship even before Ocasio-Cortez became a popular political voice, and their friends at university did not always know they were together.
Roberts has also been one of her greatest support systems throughout her career, according to a biography published earlier this year, People magazine reported.
“What we do know about Roberts doesn’t fit the stereotype of a politician’s partner,” writes Josh Gondelman in an essay in Take Up Space: The Unprecedented AOC by the editors of New York magazine.
“He doesn’t seem focus-grouped or media-trained for state dinners and press conferences. We know he’s supportive and encouraging in private,” Gondelman writes. “And his expertise, as far as his public image goes, is his elusiveness and restraint.”
The few times Roberts, a marketing professional, has popped up in media it has been with the couple’s dog, Deco, or in the 2018 documentary Knock Down the House.
Ocasio-Cortez said she and Roberts would not start planning a wedding for at least a month.
