Political Couples That Have Major Age Gaps

Age gap relationships are nothing new. Large age gaps between partners, although shocking, go as far back as Ancient Rome, and perhaps further. For example, Roman statesman Cicero was in his 60s when he married his second wife, who was only in her teens, and the daughter of Roman Emperor Augustus was on her second marriage by the time she was 18, having married a man her father's age. While science has found the best age gap for a successful relationship is only three years, that hasn't stopped people from dating and marrying those who are, in some cases, decades older or younger than them. Just so we're clear, we don't condone child marriage here at Women.

Although there are more than a few celebrities who have forced us to confront our fixation with age-gap relationships, they certainly don't corner the market on it. Politicians, too, like the current president of the United States — who is 24 years older than his wife, Melania Trump — have their fair share of age-gap relationships. Melania was only 28 when she first met Trump in 1998, then 52, at an event in New York. According to Melania's memoir, Trump was on a date with another woman during that initial meeting — one of many undeniable red flags in the Trumps' marriage — but not long afterward, the two began dating, eventually tying the knot in January 2005.

It's no secret that Trump has always had a thing for young women, and he's certainly not alone. In the world of politics, several couples have major age gaps in their relationship. In fact, you just might be surprised by who has a partner that's 10 years or more older (or younger) than them.

Not only is U.S. Senator Mitch McConnell one of the oldest lawmakers in the United States, but he also has a younger wife. After divorcing his first wife, Sherrill Redmon — who would go on to work with Gloria Steinem on the Voices of Feminism Oral History Project, according to a 2020 article in The New Yorker — in 1980, McConnell met Elaine Chao, who's 11 years his junior. Like McConnell, Chao is also involved in politics, having been the Secretary of Labor during the George W. Bush administration and Secretary of Transportation during Trump's first administration.

"I just got this call, I think, out of the blue from Mitch's assistant," Chao told CBS News in 2016 about her first date with McConnell. "I think my assistant answered back to his assistant. And that's how the first date was set up." While some arranged situations like this go south fast, that wasn't the case for these two. The couple eventually got married on February 6, 1993 — Ronald Reagan's birthday. "My wife Elaine and I got married on President Reagan's birthday, February 6^th," McConnell said during his resignation as Senate Minority Leader, via People. "It's probably not the most romantic thing to admit, but Reagan meant a great deal to both of us." For the occasion, Chao went for a wedding dress that was outside the box, opting for a blazer dress in hot pink, while McConnell wore a pinstriped navy suit. Although the couple doesn't have any kids together, McConnell does have three daughters from his previous marriage.

While Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has made a name for herself parroting everything Donald Trump says, whether it's fact or fiction, when she leaves the podium at the end of the day, she goes home to a man who's a whopping 32 years her senior. As Leavitt, who just turned 28, told Megyn Kelly on "The Megyn Kelly Show" in February 2025, she met her now-husband, Nicholas Riccio, 60, in 2022 during her congressional campaign. "A mutual friend of ours hosted an event at a restaurant that he owns up in New Hampshire and invited my husband," Leavitt told Kelly. "We met, we were acquainted as friends, and then we fell in love." In 2022, Leavitt, who can't escape rumors about her love life, would have been about 24 years old at the time, and Riccio was 57.

Although Leavitt has never seemed to hide or take issue with the age gap between her and Riccio, in November 2025, she was accused of using filters on an Instagram post to make Riccio look younger than he really is. Naturally, the comments didn't disappoint, with one commenter writing, "Face tuning your senior citizen husband is wild lol," while others shared their two cents on the obvious tweaks. As if Leavitt and Riccio didn't have enough glaring red flags in their marriage, now Leavitt is de-aging her husband and not even doing a good job of it. But as Leavitt has said before, their marriage is "atypical," so maybe trying to make Riccio look 40 instead of 60 is part of that "atypical" angle. 

If you thought it was just Republicans in the U.S. who love a good age-gap relationship these days, you were mistaken. French President Emmanuel Macron's wife, Brigitte, is 24 years older than him. And, if that almost-2.5-decade difference wasn't enough to induce some pearl clutching, Brigitte was 39 when she first met 15-year-old Emmanuel (yikes), and — yes, there's more — she was his high school drama teacher. When Emmanuel's parents found out, they sent him to boarding school in Paris.

"Emmanuel had to leave for Paris," Brigitte told Paris Match in 2023, via People. "I told myself that he would fall in love with someone his [own] age. It didn't happen." Although the two went on to live their separate lives for several years, Brigitte focusing on her family and Emmanuel going into politics, they always kept in touch. In 2006, Brigitte divorced her husband and married Emmanuel the following year.

"We are not a model couple," Brigitte said during an interview with France's RTL radio station in June 2019. "Of course we are not the ideal couple. Being a couple is complicated, it's an everyday struggle (...) When you have a big age difference, it can be even more complicated." There's also the fact that, in Brigitte being the older of the two, the couple has faced sexist backlash, to which Emmanuel has always been steadfast in shutting down.

If none of these age-gap relationships shock you, then let's take a look at Republican Representative from Tennessee, John Rose, and his wife, Chelsea. Although John and Chelsea wouldn't marry until 2011, when he was 45 and Chelsea was 21 and a college senior, their paths had crossed back in 2007 when they both attended the 79th annual Future Farmers of America (FFA) convention in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. In fact, while she was still in high school, John awarded Chelsea with a scholarship named after his parents.

"John has made everything possible that I've done in FFA beyond high school," Chelsea said in a 2009 Tennessee Tech University press release. "Through the scholarship that he provides, I've not had to have a job through college ... [John] has also coached me during my preparation, which has been extremely helpful." While there doesn't appear to be an official start date of this romance on record, it's worth noting that in 2022, Republicans in the Tennessee state legislature introduced a bill that would remove age requirements for marriage, essentially legalizing child marriage. In other words, forget about a 10-year age gap potentially being bad; for people like Rose, age really is just a number. According to his own website, Rose is an 8th-generation farmer, a proud supporter of Donald Trump, and he and Chelsea have two children together. 

Although Newt Gingrich is no longer involved in politics — thank god! — he was knee-deep in it throughout the '80s and '90s. As a Republican, Gingrich held several different political positions during his time in D.C., including being a member of Congress and Speaker of the House, from 1995 to 1999. While history isn't likely to remember Gingrich kindly in regard to his political endeavors and questionable ethics, he also won't be remembered kindly for his treatment of women.

In 1993, Gingrich began an affair with a House of Representatives staffer, Callista Bisek, who was 23 years younger than him. Although the two would eventually marry in 2000 and are still married today, not only did he file for divorce from his wife, Marianne, in 1999, just after she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, but during his affair with Bisek, Gingrich dared to be front and center, pushing for President Bill Clinton's impeachment because of his affair with Monica Lewinsky. In other words, he's a huge hypocrite. 

Bisek is Gingrich's third wife. Interestingly enough, his first wife was his former geometry teacher, Jackie Battley, who was seven years older than Gingrich. However, Gingrich was relentlessly unfaithful during the marriage, having numerous affairs with much younger women. Gingrich allegedly told his campaign manager, L.H. Carter, of Jackie shortly before their divorce, "She's not young enough or pretty enough to be the wife of the President. And besides, she has cancer," according to the L.A. Times. Bisek should probably hope she doesn't get sick either.