‘It’s True!’ AOC Confirms Engagement to College Sweetheart Riley Roberts

While love and politics don’t often intertwine, today’s trending story is all about a fairytale romance straight out of Washington, D.C. 

New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 32, is officially engaged to her longtime partner Riley Roberts, with the politician confirming the news to Insider. While journalist Eliza Relman tweeted out, “in some lighter news — @AOC confirmed to me that she’s engaged,” Ocasio-Cortez replied: “It’s true! Thank you all for the well wishes,” with a sweet blushing emoji. 

The New York politician tweeted a few more details about the engagement, replying to a follower that the engagement took place in Puerto Rico “about a month ago.” Keeping the news under wraps until now, we also know a bit about her ring.

When one user jokingly tweeted that Ocasio-Cortez’s ring had to be “made of tinfoil otherwise the right’s gonna flip,” the U.S. representative replied, “Close! It’s zero emission and recycled gold.” We love to see it!

According to Insider, Ocasio-Cortez said the couple were “taking some space to savor” their engagement before “diving into planning” the wedding, and have “no future details yet.” 

So now that we know a bit more about the engagement, what about Ocasio-Cortez and Roberts’ relationship? The politician has kept her relationship under wraps for most of her career, choosing to focus on the issues that matter — aka global warming and economic inequality. Still, their romance is actually one for the books.

The New York representative met Roberts when the two were just a couple of undergraduates at Boston University. In fact, they met at Boston University’s Coffee and Conversation in 2011, a weekly student town hall debate meeting. AOC told Vogue that the two met “in true nerdy fashion.” Still, many of their peers thought they were just friends — even when they were already dating. 

About the couple, their friend Raul Fernandez described to Vanity Fair, “I think people see how glamorous she is, but these were not two glamorous people… These were two awkward, supersmart, like-to-talk-about-issues kind of people that met through this super-wonky, nerdy thing.”

The two dated for quite some time until breaking up after graduation, upon which Roberts moved to Arizona. However, they soon got back together in New York and have been smooth sailing ever since.

Today, Roberts is a marketing professional in his own right. According to Marie Claire, he was head of marketing at HomeBinder.com and worked as a consultant for tech startups. Still, his appearance in the 2018 AOC documentary “Knock Down the House” showed that he gives his all in supporting his future wife — whether in her political career or at home.