Superstar way of life character and bestselling writer Sandra Lee has cut up from her associate, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, after 14 years, PEOPLE confirms.
“Over the current past, we've realized that our lives have gone in several directions and our romantic relationship has was a deep friendship,” the couple stated in a joint statement on Wednesday, first reported by Zack Fink. “We'll all the time be family and are absolutely supportive of one another and dedicated to the women. Our personal lives remain personal and there shall be no additional comment.”
Their breakup comes a couple of months after the couple listed their six-bedroom estate, nicknamed “Lily Pond.”
In Might, Lee, 53, swatted away reports that she and Cuomo, 61, had ended issues, writing on Fb, “Andrew and I are nonetheless very a lot collectively. … We hold our lives as personal as attainable.”
A source who is aware of them each told PEOPLE at the time that the home sale was half of a larger “downsizing,” with Lee’s focus elsewhere — on new TV tasks and ailing relations.
She said in a May interview that, together with his three daughters with ex-wife Kerry Kennedy all grown up, the property not made sense.
(Lee purchased Lily Pond herself, though she and Cuomo reportedly shared the bills. Additionally they hung out in Albany, the state capital, the place Cuomo lives in the governor’s mansion.)
Via a lot of their coupling, although they are nationally recognized, Lee and Cuomo selected not to mix the private and the professional. She rose to fame as a do-it-yourself tastemaker in cooking, adorning, gardening, crafting and hosting, with 27 books and two Emmy nods and one win for her multiple TV exhibits; whereas he, the son of a previous New York governor, has turn out to be a number one Democrat towards President Donald Trump.
“I have a associate who feels the exact same means as I do about protecting our personal relationship,” Lee told Harper’s Bazaar in 2011, six years after they began courting.
Throughout a tour of their residence final November, a New York Occasions reporter described a lot of the area as “off-the-record, if not off-limits.”
Nonetheless, when Lee spoke of her relationship with Cuomo, it was with obvious tenderness — as he did of her. And there have been occasions once they let the world in, a bit, corresponding to within the early days of his governorship and after she was recognized with cancer in 2015.
In a Times profile last fall, these near the couple described how she matched with him.
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“It’s a high-stress job and not everyone may have his greatest interest in mind. She does. And that’s a valuable present,” Cuomo’s sister Margaret advised the Occasions, calling Lee her “de facto sister.”
“We just have a superb time collectively,” Lee advised Harper’s Bazaar in 2011, describing her life with Cuomo and his women. “If a music comes on within the grocery retailer — we love this track referred to as ‘Fireflies’; it’s just an enchanting, sweet music — we dance round with the cart.”
Lee, who playfully described herself as New York’s “first girlfriend,” first met Cuomo at a summer time social gathering in the Hamptons in 2005, launched there by Alexandra Stanton, certainly one of Lee‘s greatest buddies and a former aide to Cuomo.
He was together with his daughters, Michaela and twins Cara and Mariah, and she or he has reportedly described her first impression of him as a “big, musclebound man.” (An identical image would pop up in Lee’s first fiction e-book, a few Wisconsin native’s romance with a “muscular” instructor and volunteer firefighter, receiving some knowing coverage.)
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“I keep in mind her being — I don’t need to say infatuated, as a result of it sounds too schoolgirlish — but she was taken with him,” Lee’s good friend Colleen Schmidt told the Times in 2010.
In 2005, Cuomo had not too long ago finalized an acrimonious divorce with Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy.
Lee, too, had been married as soon as earlier than — to Los Angeles businessman Bruce Karatz. She filed for divorce in 2005, in accordance with the Occasions, after rumors circulated of his infidelity. Karatz was later convicted of mail fraud and making a false assertion in reference to backdating stock options.
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Lee’s relationship with Cuomo made extra headlines as he successfully ran for New York’s governor in 2010 (he's now in his third time period), whilst Lee largely prevented the highlight of the marketing campaign trail.
“I do food and residential and backyard and depart politics to my honey — he’s fantastic at that,” she said in 2010.
She did, nevertheless, greet guests to the governor’s mansion when he took workplace in 2011. And, in the spirit of other first women — a title she might have solely held unofficially — Lee had her own causes. She is a founding member of the L.A. chapter of UNICEF and has supported efforts to end childhood hunger, supported God’s Love We Ship and Undertaking Angel Food as well as many HIV/AIDS organizations, together with Elton John’s AIDS foundation.
RELATED: Celebrity Chef Sandra Lee Opens Up about Her Cancer Journey — and Her Shocking New Documentary
Although Lee shied away from the political world, she lobbied Cuomo on passing marriage equality in New York in 2011, which made it one of the first states to take action.
Starting in 2015, Lee took on the position of most cancers detection advocate after she learned she had breast cancer and underwent a double mastectomy. This required her to tug again from her profession and work obligations to concentrate on remedy and restoration.
In 2018 she released an intimate documentary about her cancer journey, which performed at each the Sundance and Tribeca movie festivals.
The movie acquired a Gotham Award from Cuomo’s Democratic rival Invoice de Blasio, the mayor of New York Metropolis. (Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep are previous recipients.)
Neither Cuomo nor de Blasio attended the ceremony.
Lee was typically referred to as a peacemaker and someone who loved bringing individuals collectively.
“I feel that the older that you simply get and the more thoughtful that you simply get and the extra educated that you simply get concerning the well-being of the subsequent era to return, it's a must to be targeted,” she advised the Occasions last yr. “Should you’re not spending your days making the planet a greater place, what are you doing?”
Src: Lifestyle Icon Sandra Lee and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Split After 14 Years
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