Cristiano Ronaldo’s World Cup career may have come to an end after Portugal’s loss to Spain in the round of 16 in July, but his marriage is just beginning. On Tuesday, he and his longtime partner, Georgina Rodríguez, shared a picture of their hands overlapping with matching wedding bands and the caption: “C
G.”
The couple married in an intimate civil ceremony on Tuesday in Cascais, Portugal, according to People magazine, which cited a news release. A representative for Ronaldo did not respond to requests for comment.
After a decade together, marriage felt like the natural next step for Ronaldo and Rodríguez following his supersize career. The couple met in 2016, while Rodríguez was working at a Gucci store in Madrid during Ronaldo’s Real Madrid years, and she recalled that their connection was instant. “I felt something inside that can’t be explained, as if we had known each other all our lives,” she said in a Vogue article. Since then, they have built a life together and a blended family of five children, while also enduring the loss of their newborn son in 2022.
Last November, Ronaldo hinted that a wedding was on the horizon in an interview with Piers Morgan: “We plan to do it after the World Cup,” he said, before adding, with a laugh, “with a trophy.”
Ronaldo, one of the greatest soccer players of his generation, has reached a level of fame that is difficult to grasp. He is a breaker of innumerable records and a five-time winner of the Ballon d’Or. But the clock is ticking on his career. After Portugal’s World Cup defeat to Spain, a teary-eyed and emotional Ronaldo stood with his hands on his hips as he processed the end of his dream of taking home the sport’s most coveted prize. Though his tournament performance was underwhelming, he did tick a box by becoming the first player to score in six different World Cups.
Still, he is the most followed person on Instagram with 678 million followers — two and a half times as many as Taylor Swift, whose massive spectacle of a wedding took place this summer.
Ronaldo, 41, shared in the interview with Morgan that Rodríguez, 32, does not like big parties, and “she like private things,” he said. “So I will respect these decisions.”
Ronaldo has only allowed fans glimpses of their private life under controlled measures — like film crews in their home for Rodríguez’s Netflix reality series “Soy Georgina.”
Since the couple met, the former Gucci sales associate, through her association with him, managed to catapult her way up the fashion rungs and snag an invitation to the Met Gala, the industry’s biggest event. Rodríguez, who is now a model and social media influencer, has attended the last two.
She announced their engagement in August 2025, when she shared a photo of a jumbo-size diamond ring on her glazed French nails. The stone is estimated to be 30 to 40 carats, costing anywhere from $5 million to $15 million, Ann Grimmett, the vice president for merchandising at Jared Jewelers, told The New York Times.
Not only did the size of the ring cause a commotion, but the location tagged in the Instagram post — Riyadh, Saudi Arabia — prompted discussion about the fact that the couple were not married and had been living with their children in the Saudi city for two years, shedding light on the changing social norms in the once-ultraconservative country. (Ronaldo’s move to Al-Nassr was a major play by the Saudi government in its efforts to expand its sports sector and reshape the country’s image.)
In the Morgan interview, Ronaldo shared why he decided to propose when he did. Rodríguez had asked him for a diamond ring because “it was one of her dream to have like a good stone,” he said. He managed to find one, and one night, their daughters, Alana and Eva, saw him gifting the ring to her and said, “Daddy, you’re going to give the ring to mom, and you’re going to ask her to be married,” he recalled. “And I say, ‘Wow, it’s the right moment to say yes.’” He proposed then and there, forgetting to get down on one knee because it was that spontaneous.
“I always say that the good things come in a natural way,” Ronaldo said. “Football, life, opportunities, marriage.”
Many elite athletes have chosen to wait until after their professional playing careers end, or until major career milestones conclude, before getting married. Balancing travel, daily training, public scrutiny, and high-pressure seasons makes postponing a wedding a practical choice.
Derek Jeter famously kept his relationship out of the public eye throughout his 20-year Major League Baseball career. He retired from baseball in 2014, got engaged in 2015, and married Hannah Davis in 2016.
So did Michael Jordan, who married Yvette Prieto in 2013 in a private ceremony in Florida after he retired from the N.B.A. years earlier.
But Ronaldo doesn’t expect marriage to cause a major shift in their relationship. “Nothing going to change just because we’re going to marry,” he said in the November interview. “It’s just a beautiful chapter of the life.”
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