Cynthia Nixon’s Wife Is a Powerhouse Activist—Here’s What We Know About Christine Marinoni

Marinoni is an education and LGBTQ rights activist, who hails from Bainbridge Island, Washington. She moved to Brooklyn during the ’90s and opened a cafe that catered to the LGBTQ community. And when one of her workers was victimized by a hate crime, she became a vocal advocate for the movement.

But aside from supporting the gay community, Marinoni has also been deeply involved in politics and continues to make her mark in the education system. In 2000, she helped create the Alliance for Quality Education in New York, and after studying economic development at Columbia University, she worked with Mayor Bill de Blasio as senior adviser for community partnerships. NBD.

As it turns out, it was their shared passion for education reform that brought them together. The couple first met in 2001, when they were campaigning for smaller class sizes in New York public schools. They became fast friends, and over the years, their close bond developed into a romance. After Nixon parted ways with her former partner, Danny Mozes, in 2003, she started dating Marinoni in 2004.

During her interview with Radio Times in 2017, Nixon revealed that she had only dated men before she met her wife. She told the publication, “I had never dated a woman before or even kissed a woman or anything.”

She continued, “So when we started seeing each other, Christine kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for me to panic about what this would mean—to my career or to myself—as if somehow I just hadn’t noticed that she was a woman. And then she met my mother and that was when she stopped worrying about it.”

Nixon and Marinoni announced their engagement in 2009. Although gay marriage was already legal in California, they decided to wait until after New York legalized same-sex unions, so they could tie the knot there.

Fast forward to May 2012—one year after New York passed the legislation—and the happy couple exchanged vows on a rooftop in NYC.

Before Marinoni, Nixon was in a serious relationship with her high school sweetheart, Mozes. They’d been together since 1988, and they share two children together (Samuel, 25, and Charles, 19). However, they ended the relationship after 15 years.