Rosario Dawson says she's 'in love' with Cory Booker — even though he's not 'super-smooth'
Rosario Dawson and Cory Booker are in love, and they aren't hiding their budding romance. The power couple, who celebrated their first anniversary on Oct. 14, opened up about their relationship to The Washington Post.
"I’m in love! I am absolutely in love, and it is so exciting," Dawson declared.
"Look, both of us, you know, we’ve had relationships," the Democratic presidential candidate added, "but I’m not sure if I’ve ever fully given myself over to a relationship as much as I have with her and allowed myself to be as vulnerable."
Dawson recently explained to a younger cousin how to tell when you’re in love, and she could only describe how she feels about Booker. "For my whole life, I’ve always felt like, even when I got into a relationship, I was trying to be the center of the storm and everything was just this maelstrom out there," she shared. "But for the first time, I feel like I have someone in the center of the storm with me."
The “Zombieland: Double Tap” star, 40, and 50-year-old senator from New Jersey have both lived public lives for years. "I think that’s actually pretty cool," noted Dawson. "I don’t need to make that legitimate for anybody else."
Dawson and Booker first met in summer 2018 at a fundraiser for a mutual friend, Ben Jealous, who was running for governor of Maryland. When they bumped into each other again in October 2018, Booker tried to work up the nerve to ask for her number.
"I mean, gosh, that night we talked for hours and hours," recalled the politician. "I had trouble asking for her phone number... I think I said something really stupid like, 'Uh, how would I get in touch with you?' And she mercifully said something like, 'Oh, you want my phone number?' And my insides were like, 'Hell, yeah!'"
When asked if Booker really was the dork he said he was, Dawson told the Post "a million and one percent."
The actress added, "He’s so charming and so confident and so capable, but it’s not like that translates to being some super-smooth kind of guy. That’s not his style. What wins me over with him is definitely the dad jokes."
Booker, the only unmarried Democratic candidate, still finds ways to woo Dawson on the campaign trail. According to the profile, he's gotten in the habit of sending her music every morning and just finished reading David Benioff’s World War II novel City of Thieves to her over the phone. (That would be a 258 page WWII historical-fiction book.) They are making their relationship work despite rarely being together.
"I laugh because it’s like, 'Okay, you’re flying and connecting through here. Maybe we can meet at the airport hotel,'" Booker said. "It has made for great adventures of, you know, making seven hours together be magical."
Dawson plans to travel in an RV around Iowa with Booker next month. "RV tours are my jam," she said. However, the actress is already rolling her eyes at the sexist, "lazy" headlines that will likely come out of the adventure.
"I think there’s no way of making that happen without quote-unquote 'joining him on the campaign trail,'" she said. "It’s going to show up like that no matter what, but I’m just trying to spend time with my boyfriend."
In case you've been wondering what Booker and Dawson's pet names are for each other, you're in luck. Dawson revealed she calls him CAB — short for Cory Anthony Booker — and said he doesn’t like it when she uses that around other people.
"Not everybody has good initials," she joked. "He’s my anchor. He’s my guy, you know.” The actress added: “My initials are R-I-D. But he calls me RIB."
While Booker can count Dawson as a supporter, he had some work to do on her mother, Isabel. The actress and her mom stumped for Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential election and Isabel was still feeling the Bern. When they first met Isabel, she told Booker, "You know, you don’t get my vote."
But she's come around. "He’s young, he’s hard-working, he’s stoic, he’s amazing — he’s probably going to marry my daughter and shut the front door," Isabel told the Post.
That's one less hurdle out of the way for Booker's dream of a Rose Garden wedding.
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