Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez engaged to longtime boyfriend Riley Roberts
AOC may not cross the aisle much, but she will be walking down it.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is engaged to her longtime boyfriend Riley Roberts.
The congresswoman addressed the state of the union on Twitter after Business Insider reported the scoop Thursday.
“It’s true!” she confirmed. “Thank you all for the well wishes.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Riley Roberts leave the 2021 Met Gala in New York. (James Devaney/)
Ocasio-Cortez, 32, met Roberts when they were students at Boston University in 2011. They got engaged last month during a trip to Puerto Rico, she said.
“No future details yet,” she tweeted. “We’re taking some space to savor this time before diving into planning.”
Supporters of the liberal lawmaker celebrated the news on social media. At least one person wondered if she would still be called by her initials — AOC — after getting married.
Photos of Ocasio-Cortez and her fiancé vacationing in Florida at the end of 2021 prompted critics to chatter about Roberts’ wearing sandals. She reacted by accusing conservatives of wishing they were her boyfriend.
“If Republicans are mad they can’t date me they can just say that instead of projecting their sexual frustrations onto my boyfriend’s feet,” she tweeted. “Ya creepy weirdos.”
It’s true! Thank you all for the well wishes ☺️ https://t.co/i5cm9awN3S
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 19, 2022
In the biography “Take Up Space: The Unprecedented AOC,” a friend of Ocasio-Cortez’s told the book’s authors, “Every guy went through their phase where they had a crush on her.”
Ocasio-Cortez represents New York’s 14th District, made up of parts of the Bronx and Queens. She was born in the Bronx and moved for Yorktown Heights, in Westchester County, when she was 5.
Roberts, an Arizona native, works as a web developer. He and Ocasio-Cortez are mostly private about their personal lives, though they did reveal in January 2020 that they had gotten a dog. Later that year she told Vanity Fair magazine that she’s considered freezing her eggs in case she some day decides to start a family.
Ocasio-Cortez said on Instagram Thursday that she’s recently been sidelined for “the last week or two” by a health issue what was not related to COVID-19. She also explained her absence wasn’t due to anything political, either.
