New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern confirms engagement

Wellington (dpa), 3 May 2019 -  New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her partner Clarke Gayford are engaged to be married, her office said Friday.  

A spokesperson said the couple became engaged over the Easter weekend.  

Reporters spotted what appeared to be a diamond ring on the politician’s finger during a ceremony at the Pike River Mine earlier Friday.  

Ardern, 38, and Gayford, 41, are raising daughter Neve who will be one-year-old in June. Gayford spent the majority of Neve’s first year as a stay-at-home dad.  

The Labour party leader was the first head of government to give birth while in office since Pakistan’s Benazir Bhutto welcomed her daughter in 1990.  In an interview last year Ardern was asked if she would propose to Gayford.  

“No I would not ask, no,” she said.  

“I want to put him through the pain and torture of having to agonize about that question himself, that’s letting him off the hook, absolutely not.”