- Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez confirmed to Insider that she's engaged.
- AOC met her longtime partner, Riley Roberts, when they were students at Boston University.
- The New York lawmaker told Insider the two got engaged in Puerto Rico in April.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York confirmed to Insider Thursday that she's engaged to her longtime partner, Riley Roberts.
"Yep! It's true," Ocasio-Cortez told Insider of a tweet reporting that she and Roberts were engaged.
She added in a message to Insider that they got engaged in Puerto Rico last month and were "taking some space to savor" their engagement before beginning the wedding planning process.
"We got engaged last month in my family's hometown in Puerto Rico," she tweeted. "No future details yet, we're taking some space to savor this time before diving into planning."
Later on Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez shared the news of her engagement on Twitter and Instagram. Her campaign used the opportunity to send out a fundraising email that also promoted Texas progressive Jessica Cisneros' upcoming primary runoff against Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar.
—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) May 19, 2022
Ocasio-Cortez, 32, met Roberts, a marketing professional, when the two were undergraduate students at Boston University. They've dated for several years.
Roberts has largely stayed out of the spotlight but was featured in a 2018 documentary, "Knock Down the House," about Ocasio-Cortez's primary campaign. The documentary's filmmaker, Rachel Lears, told Insider in 2019 that Roberts played a key role in supporting his partner's political career.
"Everything from the emotional to the strategic to the practical, he has been a really important partner to her," she said.
Roberts and Ocasio-Cortez met at Boston University's Coffee and Conversation in 2011 — a Friday-afternoon student town hall where Ocasio-Cortez often drove discussions — but friends of the couple didn't know they'd been dating until years after they all graduated.
After they were both done with school, the couple broke up, and Roberts eventually moved back to Arizona. They later rekindled the relationship in New York.
Earlier on Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez acknowledged on Instagram that she'd been "MIA" for a week or two because of a non-COVID-19 "health issue."
"I'm back at it today, but was MIA for a bit to recover," she wrote on her story. "Just wanted to provide you all some assurance that the silence wasn't political or anything as I know that worried some."