Rosie O’Donnell Engaged to New Girlfriend Michelle Rounds
Popular talk show host Rosie O’Donnell announced she is engaged to her partner, Michelle Rounds, after dating for less than a year.
The lesbian couple apparently met in a Starbucks coffee house earlier this year, but decided to keep their relationship private for some time. Then, in September, they revealed their romance publicly at the Rosie Theater Kids Gala in New York City.
“I thought she was a 28-year-old heterosexual girl, because that’s what she looked like to me. And she’s a 40-year-old gay woman,” said O’Donnell to People magazine. “My gaydar was way off!”
Rounds, 40, works at a New York City technology company, while O’Donnell, 49, is taping her newest talk show, “The Rosie Show,” on Oprah Winfrey’s OWN television network. The two are “very, very happy” a source told The Jamaica Observer, and O’Donnell posted a picture of her partner with a single word: “love.”
To cement their relationship, O’Donnell has bought a $2.5 million home in Chicago, where her show is recorded. Rounds is expected to move in with O’Donnell, but nothing has been confirmed yet.
As for the wedding, there is a high probability it will not happen in Chicago. Illinois allows same-sex civil unions and a grants right associated with them, but does not legally permit gay marriage. For O’Donnell, a longtime advocate of gay-friendly agenda, the law may force her to get married somewhere else.
One option for O’Donnell is to do what she did last time: simply get married where gay marriage is legal. During her last marriage, to Kelli Carpenter, she was married in San Francisco two weeks after the act was legalized in California in 2004. Their marriage license was voided later by California’s Supreme Court, and the decision was publicly challenged by the talk show host several times.
O’Donnell and Rounds plan to marry over Christmas.
