ABC/Yolanda Pere(NEW YORK) — Rosie O’Donnell is engaged.
The 56-year-old confirmed to People magazine on Monday that she’s planning on getting hitched to 33-year-old Elizabeth Rooney, though their wedding won’t be any time soon.
“This is a long time in the future. We both decided that that would be best,” O’Donnell tells People.
She calls Rooney a “wonderful woman” and says they’ve been in a long-distance relationship since they went public in November 2017.
“She lives in Boston now and I live here in New York,” O’Donnell explains. “It’s been a long-distance thing. It’s been great.”
She adds, “She’s very much an equal, she’s very much her own person and loves what she does. She’s a pretty unbelievable young woman.”
As for the 23-year age gap, O’Donnell says Rooney, an Army vet, “doesn’t seem to care.”
“She’s like, ‘I was in the Army! I put my life on the line every day — you think I don’t know who I want to date?’” she says. “I’m like, ‘Alright I guess that’s true.’ She has a lot of good points.”
O’Donnell was previously married to Michelle Rounds, who died of an apparent suicide in September 2017, and Kelli Carpenter-O’Donnell, with whom she shares four children.
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