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Rabat – -New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has gotten engaged to longtime partner Clarke Gayford, whom she had a child with in June last year.
A spokesman for her office confirmed on Friday that the couple became engaged while on holiday in New Zealand’s North Island over the Easter break.
The couple made history last year when they brought their infant child, Neve Te Aroha Ardern Gayford, to the United Nations assembly hall during the Nelson Mandela Peace Summit in September.
Gayford, who has taken on the role of stay-at-home dad while Ardern leads New Zealand, tweeted during the assembly that he wished he “could have captured the startled look on a Japanese delegation inside UN yesterday who walked into a meeting room in the middle of a nappy change.”
Ardern, 38, already has an established reputation as a trailblazer. Last year, she became the first world leader in nearly 30 years to give birth to a child while in office, on top of being New Zealand’s youngest prime minister in 150 years.
Ardern also gained global praise for her collected and compassionate attitude following a terrorist attack on two mosques in Christchurch on Friday, March 15, that left 50 dead.
She quickly called for unity following the attack, reminding the nation that even though “many of those who will have been directly affected by this shooting may be migrants to New Zealand, they have chosen to make New Zealand their home, and it is their home. They are us.”
Ardern also urged people to “speak the names of those who were lost rather than the name of the man who took them. He is a terrorist. He is a criminal. He is an extremist. But he will, when I speak, be nameless.” The move earned Ardern worldwide respect, with media dubbing her the “mother of a nation.”
