The former first daughter just announced she’ll wed boyfriend Marc Mezvinsky. He has a political background—and his father spent time in jail. Learn their story and view our gallery of the couple.
Click Below For Our Gallery of Chelsea Through the Years
After months of false reports, Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky are finally engaged to be married, some thirteen years after first meeting at a 1996 Renaissance Weekend networking event in Hilton Head, S.C., where they were reportedly introduced to each other by their parents. This weekend, the pair wrote to friends:
We're sorry for the mass e-mail but we wanted to wish everyone a belated Happy Thanksgiving! We also wanted to share that we are engaged! We didn't get married this past summer despite the stories to the contrary, but we are looking toward next summer and hope you all will be there to celebrate with us. Happy Holidays! Chelsea & Marc.
Though Mezvinsky was a White House intern (no jokes, please), the two are said to have been just friends throughout high school, even if rumors of a relationship led to some speculation that Chelsea chose Stanford to be closer to “shaggy-haired hunk” Mezvinsky.
The pair didn’t start dating officially until 2005, after Chelsea’s split with fellow Stanford alum Ian Klaus, whose most memorable feat was allegedly carrying her to a car after she passed out at a London club in 2002. (For those worried: Klaus and Mezvinsky are said to get along, after being introduced to each other by the former president.)
Mezvinsky, 31, and Clinton, 29, have laid fairly low since they started dating four years ago, but that didn’t dampen rampant engagement rumors. In the spring, the Boston Globe speculated about a possible Martha’s Vineyard wedding. All parties involved issued strong denials at the time.
• Chelsea's Former FlamesClinton (Secret Service nickname: “energy”) has been a well-known public figure since her father’s national campaign in 1992—ballet fan, Gramercy resident, Columbia student. The question now is: What’s her future husband like? The New York Times describes him as “bespectacled, mop-headed… known for his confidence and teasing sense of humor” while the Washington Post calls him “an underdressed, wet-haired Goldman Sachs investment dude”.
Like Chelsea, Mezvinsky has a background in finance—he majored in the subject at Stanford and now works as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs—and politco parents: both his mother and father served in the House of Representatives, from Pennsylvania and Iowa, respectively. Both, too, received national attention, although not all of it positive: Marjorie Mezvinsky cast the deciding vote on her future in-law’s controversial budget in 1993 and lost her congressional seat as a result while Ed Mezvinsky’s notoriety derived from his role as one of the most prominent victims of the classic Nigerian bank scams (one involved a suitcase of $100 bills supposedly dyed black).
Ed Mezvinsky spent five years in jail on counts of bank, wire, and mail fraud, among other charges, and was released in 2008. According to prosecutors, his schemes date back to 1980, and many involved the same kinds of scams as the spam emails that tell tales of woe, looking for someone to help them extract money from "frozen" (and fraudulent) bank accounts with millions of dollars in cash; oddly enough, Ed was apparently on both sides of the scam—as a willing partner and an unwilling victim.
Unlike Clinton, however, Mezvinsky is Jewish—though Chelsea is said to be learning more about his faith. No mention about the ceremony’s denomination was made in the email that Clinton and Mezvinsky sent out this weekend, though apparently the two are planning on getting hitched next summer.