Ronda Cress was not impressed the first time she had heard of Mary Trump.
It was July 2020 and Ms. Trump, a psychologist and niece of the president, had just written a memoir, “Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man,” about her and the president’s upbringing.
“I’m like, ‘Who is this, another Trump coming out of the woodwork and trying to get her 15 minutes of fame?’” said Ms. Cress, a former Justice Department civil rights lawyer.
But that opinion started to change when she happened upon an interview of Ms. Trump on ABC News, speaking as she often has, in critical and clinical terms, about her uncle.
“I remember coming away thinking, ‘Well, clearly, I was wrong about her,’” Ms. Cress said in an interview earlier this year.
Ms. Cress’s course correction was just the first step in an unlikely romance. What began as a parasocial crush between a fan and an estranged presidential scion evolved into a midlife relationship that neither expected.
“I’ve been alone for a very long time,” said Ms. Trump, 61, the daughter of Fred Trump Jr., the president’s older brother, who died after a battle with alcoholism in 1981. She had openly wondered “why anybody would be interested in anything having to do with me.”
Indeed, Ms. Trump described herself, again and again, as a reserved celebrity living a lonely, anxious life. Her first marriage, to a woman, ended about 20 years ago, before same-sex marriage was legally recognized; she had not been closely involved with anyone since.
She has a tight relationship with her daughter from that partnership, but was living an “increasingly isolated existence,” a situation exacerbated by her opposition to her uncle’s policies and campaigns, including a steady stream of sharp criticism on Ms. Trump’s Substack and her podcast. That opposition had frayed family relations, cost her longtime friends, and left her feeling, mentally, that she was “at the end of my rope.”
That insecurity may surprise her followers, who know Ms. Trump as a fierce critic of Mr. Trump across liberal cable news, three books, and her YouTube channel, where she posts analyses and takedowns to more than half a million subscribers. (The White House did not return requests for comment on Ms. Trump’s remarks; in the past, the president has called his niece “a mess” and “a seldom seen niece who knows little about me.”)
Even before “Too Much and Never Enough,” Ms. Trump had a complicated relationship with President Trump, whom she blamed in part for abandoning her father, one of his four siblings, during his personal struggles. Still, they were once close enough that Mr. Trump asked Ms. Trump to write a book about him in the 1980s, though she said he later had her fired.
As a gay woman, Ms. Trump has also criticized Mr. Trump’s policies toward the L.G.B.T.Q. community, and expressed concern about conservative justices — appointed by the president — overturning same-sex marriage. But she also noted a deep ambivalence on the part of her family and the president about her homosexuality, saying “nobody was interested in that part of my life.”
Like Ms. Trump, Ms. Cress, 49, was trying to heal after recent relationships, and after losing a brother and her mother. So when she found herself suddenly infatuated with a stranger, it came as a surprise.
The interview marked another step in the couple’s gradual public reveal, informed by their desire for privacy and fears of professional retribution for Ms. Cress, who left the Justice Department in May 2025, four months after Mr. Trump’s inauguration. Ms. Trump, who has called her uncle “very vindictive” and is facing a $100 million lawsuit from him, said she hasn’t seen the president since April 2017. “Now we communicate through our lawyers,” she said. “Which is very Trump.”
The couple announced their October 2025 wedding in posts shared on their respective Substack accounts this year. Ms. Trump had been generally private about her romantic life, but her post was plain in its affection.
“Against all of the odds,” she wrote. “I had found the perfect person for me.”
‘Ronda from the Substack’
“I wonder if she’s a lesbian?,” Ms. Cress recalled thinking, after seeing Ms. Trump on “The Rachel Maddow Show.”
As her marriage to a woman ended in divorce in 2021, Ms. Cress said her life seemed somewhat stagnant. Raised on a rural farm in Madison County, Ohio, she was still working in Columbus as senior legal counsel for the state Medicaid department and longing for a fresh start.
A die-hard Democrat, she began attending political events and fund-raisers for candidates she supported. She also started listening to Ms. Trump’s podcast, watching her interviews, reading her Substack and frequently commenting on her posts to agree with her critiques of the president.
“There were times where I thought, ‘You’re commenting way too much,’” Ms. Cress said.
“At the time, I’m in my mid-40s and trying to leave Ohio and move to a new city and kind of start over again,” she said. “And I drew some inspiration from her story because she completely changed her life at age 55 when she wrote that book.”
That admiration was accompanied by another emotion, too, she admitted.
“At some point I noticed,” Ms. Cress recalled, “I also find her attractive.”
In December 2022, Ms. Cress traveled to New York to attend a holiday party for LPAC, a super PAC supporting L.G.B.T.Q. women and nonbinary candidates, held in Ms. Trump’s apartment in SoHo. Ms. Trump, a clinical psychologist who no longer practices, had joined the board in 2020 and recently moved from Long Island.
Ms. Cress, who had donated to the group, bought a ticket — and kept an eye out for Ms. Trump, despite convincing herself that it was just a crush.
“I thought, but she would never be interested in me,” Ms. Cress said. “I’m from Ohio and grew up on a farm, and she’s a native New Yorker. We have totally different backgrounds, totally different upbringings.”
And yet, when she saw Ms. Trump, “it was like this feeling of being struck by lightning.”
They started chatting, and suddenly, Ms. Trump realized that Ms. Cress was “Ronda from the Substack,” the frequent commenter.
“I also probably thought that she was 85, because that’s the average age of my readers,” Ms. Trump said jokingly.
The conversation was easy — chitchat about music (their love for the musician Joan Armatrading) and family travel. The two did not exchange phone numbers: Ms. Cress went back to Columbus, and Ms. Trump went back to her solitary life.
And strangely, the couple never would have gotten together had it not been for Donald Trump’s re-election.
A Country Girl and a City Girl
By 2024, Ms. Cress had moved from Ohio to Washington and had finally landed her dream job at the Justice Department, working in disability rights. But as her career was falling into place, Ms. Trump was grappling with her uncle’s victory over Kamala Harris.
The two stayed in touch in a professional and political capacity, often through LPAC, while a series of “near misses” followed, with Ms. Cress attending events hoping Ms. Trump might be there.
But Ms. Trump did not leave her apartment often, instead working and withdrawing — a period she likened to having “bad PTSD” from the election result.
On Jan. 17, 2025, just three days before Mr. Trump was to take office again, Ms. Trump hopped on a plane to visit two friends in Scottsdale, Ariz. At the same time, Ms. Cress began to write Ms. Trump an email, where she shared her concerns about the changes and the uncertain times that were upon them.
And then, Ms. Cress confessed her feelings.
She sent the email the morning of Inauguration Day. Initially, Ms. Trump was stunned that Ms. Cress, or anyone, really, would want to get close to her. But about a week later, after encouragement from the two friends she was visiting, Ms. Trump called Ms. Cress. They spoke for four hours.
After that call, they began talking for hours nearly every day. Before long, Ms. Trump had a realization: “We didn’t speak this one day,” she said. “I was so upset.” It was then that she realized that their connection was deeper than friendship.
The couple now live and work alongside their two cats and a dog, ordering in most nights. They make playful jabs at each other and exude the care and comfort of a longtime union, even though they only began dating last year. They both describe their relationship as “transformative,” upending lives and arcs that both had seemingly resigned themselves to.
Talking about their courtship, Ms. Trump said, is a welcome distraction from politics. “It’s more fun,” she said, “than talking about the end of the world.”
In March 2025, they saw each other for the first time after their relationship turned romantic in Washington, and they stopped in their tracks. “We both just got big smiles on our faces,” Ms. Cress said.
Ms. Trump proposed a month later, and on Oct. 2, 2025, the couple were wed at Brooklyn Borough Hall. Later that month, they celebrated their union in Scottsdale with 31 guests, including Ms. Trump’s daughter.
They are, in some ways, opposites: a country girl and a city girl.
But their common interests bond them: reading, the arts, and, of course, their worries about their country. After the Trump administration offered government employees the option to resign, Ms. Cress left the Justice Department. She has since taken an entrepreneurial path with her own Substack, “The Little Girl with the Big Voice,” where she discusses human rights movements.
And now, they seem conscious of the lost time they spent before knowing each other. “I’m 60. We don’t have 50 years together,” Ms. Trump said.
They work side-by-side in SoHo, as Ms. Cress writes and Ms. Trump continues to churn through her busy schedule, often talking about her uncle, though — unlike times past — he’s no longer her favorite topic.
“If there’s one thing I can talk about forever,” Ms. Trump said, “It’s her.”
Sadiba Hasan reports on love and culture for the Styles section of The Times.
The post Mary Trump Has More to Talk About Than Her Uncle appeared first on New York Times.
