AOC Says Getting Engaged Was Her Fiancé's New Year's Resolution: 'You're Going to Have to Woo Me'

James Devaney/GC Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with her boyfriend Riley Roberts

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her fiancé, Riley Roberts, began dating when they were both 20-somethings after first meeting as 19-year-old undergraduates at Boston University.

Years later, at 32, the lawmaker was unsure about marriage when Roberts brought up the prospect during a late 2021 conversation about their New Year's resolutions.

Roberts, a web developer, told his long-term partner his goal for 2022 was "that perhaps we can be engaged by the end of the year," Ocasio-Cortez recalled in an interview with GQ.

"And I said, 'Oh, really? Well, you're going to have to woo me. You're going to have to convince me, after all this time, why I should,'" she says in a lengthy profile about her time in Congress and her future in politics.

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Her uncertainty, she explained to GQ, partly came from the nearly incomprehensible change they'd experienced in their lives since meeting in college.

Anyone fortunate enough to reach her or his 30s is likely going to do a lot of growing up, but as the GQ writer points out, the woman known now as AOC is "arguably more famous than any other person in American politics without the last name Obama or Trump" and both "beloved and loathed at competing ends of the political spectrum."

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"For him to experience us dating when I was still working as a waitress and a bartender through now and seeing how the world responds [to me], I think has been a very eye-opening experience for him as well," Ocasio-Cortez says.

AOC also had concerns about being in an intercultural, interracial marriage, according to GQ, as well as how a potential husband would fair alongside a spouse with her level of dedication and achievement.

"The moment you start being yourself, they kind of freak out," she says of men who only think they can handle life next to an independent, successful woman with the immense potential of someone like AOC. "I think it causes a conflict within them that they didn't even anticipate. It's not even a deception. It's just, they uncover insecurities that they didn't know were there."

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Since pulling off a now-legendary political upset in 2018 and serving in Congress in a political spotlight far more intense that many would have imagined, Ocasio-Cortez discovered that Roberts wasn't the kind of guy whose self-doubt grows in relation to his partner's fame and good fortune.

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"In fact, the opposite happened," she said. "He has been so supportive and willing and deeply engaging. He's not a witness to this. He dives into the fray for himself in that he uses what we go through as opportunities for personal growth. And it's incredible."

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And so, the couple got engaged in April during a trip to her family's hometown in Puerto Rico. At the time, she said they were "taking some space to savor this time" before starting to plan a wedding.

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"I feel like I won the men lottery in my life," AOC told GQ, adding Roberts to a list of men who've earned her admiration, respect and love, including her father, Sergio Ocasio (who died of cancer in 2008), the cousins she grew up with in the South Bronx and her chief of staff, Gerardo Bonilla Chavez.

"It is the presence of good men," AOC said, "that has shown me what kind of men are possible in this world."