Karoline Leavitt Is Talking About Her Age-Gap Relationship Again
Age-gap relationship discourse is like human papillomavirus: It’s always lying dormant, ready to pop up again at any given moment. On Wednesday morning, the conversation resurfaced on Miranda Devine’s Pod Force One podcast, when Trump press secretary Karoline Leavitt discussed what it was like to introduce her parents to her now-husband, Nicholas Riccio, who is 32 years her senior.
“What did your parents think when you said, ‘Oh, I’ve got this guy who is almost the same age as my dad?’” Devine asked Leavitt, who is 28.
“It’s definitely a challenging conversation to have at first,” Leavitt replied. “But then once they got to know him and saw who he is as a man and his character and how much he adores me, I think it became quite easy for them. And now we’re all friends.”
Leavitt said her parents were traveling to D.C. to spend time with her husband and their 16-month-old son, Niko. “It’s a typical family relationship,” she said of Riccio’s dynamic with his in-laws. “My husband has such respect for my parents and the way they raised me, and we have a lot of fun together when they come to visit.”
Leavitt met Riccio, a real-estate developer, in 2022, when she was 25 and running for a congressional seat in her home state of New Hampshire. (She lost.) Riccio was 57. The couple had a son in July of last year and married in January 2025, shortly before Trump’s second inauguration.
In the past, Leavitt has conceded that the age gap between her and her husband may raise eyebrows. “I mean, it’s a very atypical love story,” she said in February on an episode of The Megyn Kelly Show. “But he’s incredible. He is my greatest supporter, he’s my best friend, he’s my rock.”
Still, being married to a man who is reportedly five years older than your mother clearly comes with its own challenges. Earlier this month, Leavitt received criticism for allegedly editing a photo of her husband in a Halloween Instagram post. (He did look notably younger than usual.) “Face tuning your senior citizen husband is wild lol,” reads the top comment on the post.
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