Top stories
Cuomo and TV host form an odd US power couple
USINFO | 2013-08-28 10:22
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo and TV lifestyle celebrity Sandra Lee have been a couple for five years, highly visible in their respective fields but largely under the radar as a couple.
With Cuomo now running for the job once held by his father, Mario, they remain discreet about their live-in relationship. The intriguing possibility remains: If Cuomo should win in November, New York’s incoming first family could be uniquely nontraditional: Two experts in statecraft and kitchencraft, living together without benefit of marriage.
Cuomo and Lee might seem like a peculiar power couple.
Lee, 43, is host of two Food Network shows: Semi-Homemade Cooking with Sandra Lee and Sandra’s Money Saving Meals. A product of the West Coast and the Midwest, she chops parsley on camera with animated charm. Her trademark phrase, “semi-homemade,” describes her philosophy of adding fresh ingredients to packaged food (Don’t have time to whip cream? Take a tub of Cool Whip and add vanilla extract).
Cuomo is a 52-year-old from the New York City borough of Queens, the elder son of former New York governor Mario Cuomo. Like his father, he is lawyerly and playfully combative (Do not want to answer a reporter’s question? Start a Socratic dialogue). He works on old muscle cars for fun and is more at home with a wrench than a whisk.
Like his girlfriend, he is divorced. He was married to a member of another distinguished Democratic family, Kerry Kennedy, a daughter of US senator Robert Kennedy and niece of former US president John F. Kennedy.
“We have a wonderful, supportive relationship and we both are always there to help the other,” Lee said. “I leave the law enforcement and the politics to him and he stays away from any recipe development, though he is impressive on the grill.”
They met at a party in 2005 at a mutual friend’s house in the Hamptons, a summer Long Island getaway for New York’s wealthy, and now live north of Long Island, where they spend time with Cuomo’s three teenage daughters.
“In a sort of sea of celebrity,” Food Network President Brooke Johnson said, the couple’s relationship “seems like a little island of realness and calmness.”
Though Cuomo and Lee court publicity as individuals, they are leery of drawing back the curtains on their relationship. Neither would agree to an interview.
Aides to Lee also said it is too early to say whether the couple would move into the Executive Mansion in Albany should Cuomo become governor.
During an appearance by Lee last week on a Fox Television morning show, the hosts steered the conversation away from the topic of tuna to Cuomo. After offering that Cuomo is “very heart-healthy,” thoughtful and kind, Lee joked that she hopes people ask Cuomo about her Food Network shows when he is interviewed.
Lee appeared on stage with the Cuomo family during his campaign launch and at the party convention and she is in some family photos on her boyfriend’s campaign Web site. However, she is not mentioned along with his parents and his daughters in the “About Andrew” section.
Analysts say political as well as personal reasons could be cause for Cuomo to tread gingerly about his long-term relationship as he runs for higher office, even though it is not exactly uncharted political territory.
Actress Debra Winger reportedly slept over at the Nebraska governor’s mansion in the 1980s. Closer to home, New York City’s popular mayor, Mike Bloomberg, lives in his Upper East Side townhouse — he never moved into the official mayor’s mansion — with his girlfriend, Diana Taylor.
(If Cuomo should win, would it be OK to call Lee the first lady of New York? No, according to protocol guru Letitia Baldridge, who was Jacqueline Kennedy’s social secretary in the White House. Baldridge said that while it is common to call governors’ wives “first ladies,” there is only one and she is married to the president.)
Bella DePaulo, who wrote about single adults in the book Singled Out, said that while attitudes about relationships have become more liberal, mores remain in flux and politicians often are leery of crossing the line.
“We’re feeling our way,” she said, “and I think for a high-profile person in politics, the stakes are higher for them to guess wrong when there is no established consensus.”
Still, several political analysts said the couple’s live-in relationship is unlikely to be a big issue. Political science professor Robert McClure of Syracuse University said the people who would be bothered by it probably would not vote for the Democrat anyway.
Some New York voters said they were not even aware of the relationship between the politician and the cook. And they said it made no difference to them.
“It really doesn’t matter to me,” Kyle Lavorgna said in Albany, “as long as it’s not another reality show starting.”
