Who is Christine Marinoni?
Marinoni hails from Washington state, and grew up on Bainbridge Island across from Seattle. She’s lived in New York since the early ‘90s, and got a degree in economic development at Columbia University. According to the New York Times, Marinoni initially planned to work in international affairs but ultimately became much more community-minded. She started a career in education organizing and worked at the Alliance for Quality Education, where Nixon became a spokesperson. She has been a longtime activist and neighborhood organizer, in particular around LGBTQ advocacy.
Part of that advocacy was fueled by the events she and her staff endured after she opened a coffee shop in Park Slope. In 2017, Marinoni told City & State New York that one of her employees was attacked in a hate crime, and she started organizing events to bring attention to the violence faced by the community.
“As an LGBTQ person, I’ve always been focused on issues across the board,” Marinoni explained. “I think it’s important for the LGBT community to be joining hands with other groups and issues like income inequality and education.”
She also worked in the Mayor’s office under the Bill De Blasio administration but left to help Nixon with her campaign for New York governor.
Do they have any children together?
They welcome their first child together in 2011, a son named Max Ellington Nixon-Marinoni. Nixon also has two children she shares with Mozes: Seph, 26, and Charles, 20. Marinoni carried Max and told the New York Times that the journey to having a baby was fraught. At one point, she thought she would not be able to have a child.
“I always just pictured myself like a little worker bee my entire life,” she said. “But it’s like this amazing gift.”
In anticipation of And Just Like That’s premiere, Nixon shared a picture of Max with actor Niall Cunningham, who plays her adult son, Brady Hobbes, on the show.
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“Miranda and Cynthia’s little loves. #AndJustLikeThat,” she wrote over the adorable photo of two redheads.
Aimée Lutkin
Aimée Lutkin is the weekend editor at ELLE.com. Her writing has appeared in Jezebel, Glamour, Marie Claire and more. Her first book, The Lonely Hunter, will be released by Dial Press in February 2022.
How did Marinoni and Nixon meet?
Nixon is a passionate advocate for a number of issues herself and met Marinoni while campaigning to reduce public school class sizes in New York City in 2001. reports that they were initially close friends and began dating in 2004. It was Nixon’s first relationship with a woman though Marinoni had openly identified as a lesbian for years. It was something that concerned the education organizer at first.
At the WGA strike together in May 2023.
Jose Perez/Bauer-Griffin//Getty Images
“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,” Nixon said. “And then she met my mother, and that was when she stopped worrying about it.”
For a while, Nixon’s publicist discouraged her from going public with her relationship.
She explained, “He just kept saying, ‘It’s your life, and it’s private, and that’s it.’ And we kept asking, ‘That’s the whole thing? We never move past that.’ We’re at the playground with the kids, and pictures are taken of us, and we say, ‘No, she’s my friend?’”
Nixon’s next publicist Kelly Bush encouraged her to confirm everything, and she soon did.
Andrew Kent//Getty Images
