Celebrity lifestyle personality and bestselling authorSandra Leehas split from her partner, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, after 14 years, PEOPLE confirms.
Their breakup comes a few monthsafter the couple listedtheir six-bedroom estate, nicknamed“Lily Pond.”
In May, Lee, 53, swatted awayreportsthat she and Cuomo, 61, had ended things, writing on Facebook, “Andrew and I are still very much together. … We keep our lives as private as possible.”
Shesaid in a May interviewthat, with his three daughters with ex-wife Kerry Kennedy all grown up, the property no longer made sense.
(Lee purchased Lily Pond herself, though she and Cuomo reportedly shared the expenses. They also spent time in Albany, the state capital, where Cuomo lives in the governor’s mansion.)
“I have a partner who feels the exact same way as I do about protecting our personal relationship,” LeetoldHarper’s Bazaarin 2011, six years after they started dating.
During a tour of their home last November, aNew York Timesreporterdescribedmuch of the space as “off-the-record, if not off-limits.”
Still, when Lee spoke of her relationship with Cuomo, it was with obvious tenderness — as he did of her. And there were times when they let the world in, a bit, such as in the early days of his governorship and after she was diagnosed with cancer in 2015.
In aTimesprofile last fall, those close to the couple described how she matched with him.
From left: Sandra Lee and Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2014.Kenneth Gabrielsen/Getty
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“It’s a high-stress job and not everyone will have his best interest in mind. She does. And that’s a precious gift,” Cuomo’s sister Margaret told theTimes,calling Lee her “de facto sister.”
“We just have a good time together,” Lee toldHarper’s Bazaarin 2011, describing her life with Cuomo and his girls. “If a song comes on in the grocery store — we love this song called ‘Fireflies’; it’s just an enchanting, sweet song — we dance around with the cart.”
He was with his daughters, Michaela and twins Cara and Mariah, and she hasreportedly describedher first impression of him as a “huge, musclebound man.” (A similar image would pop up in Lee’s first fiction book, about a Wisconsin native’s romance with a “muscular” teacher and volunteer firefighter,receiving someknowing coverage.)
“I remember her being — I don’t want to say infatuated, because it sounds too schoolgirlish — but she was taken with him,” Lee’s friend Colleen Schmidttold theTimesin 2010.
In 2005, Cuomo had not too long ago finalizedan acrimonious divorcewith Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Robert F. Kennedy and Ethel Kennedy.
Lee, too, had been married once before — to Los Angeles businessman Bruce Karatz. She filed for divorce in 2005, according to theTimes, after rumors circulated of his infidelity. Karatz waslater convicted ofmail fraud and making a false statement in connection withbackdating stock options.
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From left: Gov. Cuomo and Sandra Lee in 2006.Evan Agostini/Getty
Lee’s relationship with Cuomo made more headlines as he successfully ran for New York’s governor in 2010 (he is now in his third term), even as Lee largely avoided the spotlight of the campaign trail.
“I do food and home and garden and leave politics to my honey — he’s wonderful at that,” shesaid in 2010.
She did, however,greet guests to the governor’s mansionwhen he took office in 2011. And, in the spirit of other first ladies — a title she may have only held unofficially — Lee had her own causes. She is a founding member of the L.A. chapter of UNICEF and has supported effortsto end childhood hunger, supported God’s Love We Deliver and Project Angel Food as well as many HIV/AIDS organizations, including Elton John’s AIDS foundation.
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 do so.
Beginning in 2015, Lee took on the role of cancer detection advocateafter she learned she had breast cancerand underwent a double mastectomy. This required her to pull back from her career and work obligations to focus on treatment and recovery.
In 2018 she releasedan intimate documentaryabout her cancer journey, which played at both the Sundance and Tribeca film festivals.
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The film received a Gotham Award from Cuomo’s Democratic rival Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York City. (Robert De Niro and Meryl Streep are previous recipients.)
Neither Cuomo nor de Blasio attended the ceremony.
Lee was often known as a peacemaker and someone who enjoyed bringing people together.
“I think that the older that you get and the more thoughtful that you get and the more educated that you get about the well-being of the next generation to come, you have to be focused,” she told theTimeslast year. “If you’re not spending your days making the planet a better place, what are you doing?”
source: people.com
