• Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez confirmed to Insider that she's engaged.
  • AOC met her longtime partner, Riley Roberts, when the two were college students at Boston University.
  • The New York lawmaker told Insider the two got engaged in Puerto Rico in April. 

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez confirmed to Insider on Thursday that she's engaged to her longtime partner Riley Roberts.

"Yep! It's true," Ocasio-Cortez told Insider of an unconfirmed report that she and Roberts were engaged. 

She added that they got engaged in Puerto Rico last month and are "taking some space to savor" their engagement before beginning the wedding planning process. 

"We got engaged last month in my family's hometown in Puerto Rico," she said via Twitter message. "No future details yet, we're taking some space to savor this time before diving into planning."

Ocasio-Cortez, 32, met Roberts, a marketing professional, when the two were undergraduate students at Boston University. They've dated for several years. 

Roberts has largely stayed out of the spotlight, but was featured in a 2018 documentary, "Knock Down the House," about Ocasio-Cortez's primary campaign. The documentary filmmaker, Rachel Lears, told Insider in 2019 that Roberts played a key role in supporting his partner's political career.

"Everything from the emotional to the strategic to the practical, he has been a really important partner to her," she said.

After first meeting at BU's Coffee & Conversations in 2011 — a Friday-afternoon student town-hall where Ocasio-Cortez often drove discussions — friends of the couple didn't even know they had been dating until years after they all graduated.

After they were both done with school, the couple broke up and Roberts eventually moved back to Arizona. They later rekindled the relationship in New York.

Earlier on Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez acknowledged on Instagram that she'd been "MIA" for a week or two due to a non-COVID "health issue." 

"I'm back at it today, but was MIA for a bit to recover," she wrote on her story. "Just wanted to provide you all some assurance that the silence wasn't political or anything as I know that worried some."

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Read the original article on Business Insider