Christine Marinoni Biography

Christine Marinoni has not revealed much about her early life and childhood, but it is known that she was born in Washington, in 1951.

According to Christine Marinoni, her journey to become an activist was "a little self-interested" due to certain events in her life. She came out as a lesbian in 1995 and soon after, opened a lesbian coffee shop/bar in Park Slope, Brooklyn. A couple of years later, one of the bartenders in the shop left her job after becoming a victim of hate crime. Following that incident, Marinoni organized some events to bring attention to the issues faced by LGBT people and called for increased police protection for the community. After gay college student Matthew Shepard was brutally tortured and murdered in 1998, she was one of the main organizers for several events, including the marches in Park Slope. After she began dating Cynthia Nixon, the two started lobbying in New York for legalization of same-sex marriage as they wanted to get married in the city. They met with legislators in Albany to discuss the passage of gay marriage in New York City. Marinoni went on to contribute to education and the LGBTQ community during her tenure in the administration. She leads a very private life, but has gained the attention of the media since her relationship with Nixon became public.

Christine Marinoni met actress Cynthia Nixon in an education fundraiser rally in May 2002, which she helped in organizing. While Marinoni had been an education activist for years, Nixon was at the time campaigning to reduce class sizes in public-schools in New York City. In the following years, the two worked on several other political issues together and grew close to one another. When Nixon's relationship with her then-boyfriend Danny Mozes ended in 2003, Marinoni became her emotional support. The couple began dating officially in 2004, but Nixon kept the relationship under wraps out of concerns that it would ruin her acting career. During an interview with Radio Times in 2017, Nixon revealed that they stopped worrying about it after Marinoni met her mother, following which they confirmed the dating rumors. Interestingly, Nixon had told 'The Advocate' in an interview in 2012 that she identified as bisexual, adding that "In terms of sexual orientation I don’t really feel I’ve changed."

They got engaged in April 2009, but decided to wait for gay marriage to be legal in New York where they wanted to tie the knot. They began campaigning and fundraising for the issue during the next couple of years. In February 2011, 'The Daily Mail' reported that Marinoni had secretly given birth to a baby boy named Max Ellington Nixon-Marinoni. The couple had not announced the pregnancy prior to that and the identity of the father was not revealed either. After gay marriage was legalized, they finally got married in New York City on May 27, 2012. A picture from the wedding was published by 'People.com' two days later, in which Nixon could be seen wearing a pale green gown by Carolina Herrera while Marinoni wore a suit with a dark green tie. Marinoni reportedly preferred that Nixon used a gender-neutral term like "my spouse" to refer to her, but Nixon thought that was a crazy idea and refers to her as her "wife". The couple lives together in Manhattan, New York City. Nixon also has two children, named Samantha and Charles, from her previous relationship with Mozes. She said in an interview that her two elder kids also call Marinoni 'Mommy' and that she is very close to them. Nixon once told 'The Advocate' that "A lot of what I love about her is her butchness."