Is Anderson Cooper Married? All About His Relationship With Benjamin Maisani & More
Anderson Cooper will return to host CNN’s New Year’s Eve Live to ring in 2026. For the ninth year in a row, he’ll be hosting the show alongside his longtime best friend Andy Cohen.
The journalist will be front and center on television screens for the live broadcast. Scroll down for everything we know about his love life, including whether he has a relationship history with Cohen and more.
Is Anderson Cooper married?
No, Cooper, who came out as gay in 2012, is not married. Since breaking up with his partner, Benjamin Maisani, in 2018, he has been very private about his personal life.
However, he said during an interview on Howard Stern‘s radio show in September 2023 that he was single. “I’m not dating. I’m happy,” Cooper confirmed. “I’ve got a great love affair with my kids right now. It’s the best thing ever.”
He reiterated these feelings in an interview with People, noting that dating was not a priority for him at the time.
Why did Anderson Cooper and Benjamin Maisani split?
Cooper and Maisani met in 2009. Although there were rumors about a romance between them over the years, they did not go public with their relationship until 2015.
Three years later, Cooper confirmed their split, telling People, “Benjamin and I separated as boyfriends some time ago. We are still family to each other, and love each other very much. We remain the best of friends, and will continue to share much of our lives together.”
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Cooper had previously revealed that Maisani was “annoyed” by how much he travels for work, but added that his partner was “pretty understanding” about the demands of his job. After the split, he revealed that different feelings about wanting children contributed to the breakup.
“He wasn’t really sure he wanted to have a kid, which is one of the reasons we probably broke up,” Cooper said on The Ellen DeGeneres Show in 2021.
Does Anderson Cooper have kids?
Yes, Cooper has two children born via surrogate. He welcomed his first son, Wyatt, named after his late father, in April 2020, followed by another son, Sebastian, in 2022.
Cooper and Maisani coparent the children together. “He’s my family, and I want him to be Wyatt’s family, as well,” Cooper explained in May 2020. In his Ellen interview, he added that Maisani “came around to the idea” of having kids after Cooper welcomed Wyatt as a single father.
“It’s awesome. It’s probably an unusual setup, but I knew he would be a great dad, and he is. We’re exes, but we’re family to each other, and we love each other as family and as co-parents,” Cooper added in an interview with People.
The exes live together while raising their boys. “We get along really well and, yeah, it’s weird, but it works out,” Cooper admitted. Cooper has said that the kids refer to him as “daddy” and Maisani as “papa.”
Are Anderson Cooper and Andy Cohen dating?
No, Cooper and Cohen are not dating and have never been in a romantic relationship. The men met in the 1990s after a mutual friend tried to set them up on a blind date. A phone conversation made it clear to Cooper that a date would never happen, though.
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“We had a phone call to set up the date, and I knew within 45 seconds I was never going on a date with Andy Cohen,” he said on The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon in 2017. “He violated my cardinal rule, which is he asked me about my mom [Gloria Vanderbilt] within the first minute of talking to me.”
In the early 2000s, they were in a friend group that traveled together, which is how their friendship took off. “Really the way we became friends is he and I have been around the world and back together. We’ve really been around the world together,” Cohen told Entertainment Weekly. After decades of friendship, the two remain close. Now, they take family vacations with their kids, as well.
New Year’s Eve Live 2026, Wednesday, December 31, 8/7c, CNN
