Karoline Leavitt, 28, Moans That Job Puts Pressure on Marriage to Husband, 60
The White House press secretary has a 1-year-old child with a man 32 years her senior.

Chip Somodevilla/Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has spoken about how the demands of her job are pulling her away from her 60-year-old husband.
Leavitt, who at 28 is the youngest White House press secretary in history, told the Daily Mail that she no longer plans date nights with her real estate mogul husband, Nicholas Riccio, because she fears they will be canceled anyway.
“Honestly, I have PTSD about making plans, so I just don’t,” Leavitt said. “We just roll with it. If there’s a night where I happen to become free, then we take full advantage of that as a family.”

Karoline Leavitt's 60-year-old husband is the real estate magnate behind Riccio Enterprises in New Hampshire.
Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images
Leavitt added that she and her family are also forced to cancel their vacation plans due to the demands of working as President Donald Trump’s main point of contact with the media.
“My husband and I had three different mini weekend getaway vacations this summer. All three got canceled due to foreign policy events,” she said.
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“But that’s part of the job, and it’s what makes it fun and challenging and keeps every day new. And it’s, you know, it’s temporary. We’re one year down. We’ve got three to go.”
Leavitt met Riccio in 2022 when she was running for Congress in New Hampshire, and the pair welcomed their son, Niko, in July 2024. The couple, who have a 32-year age gap, were married in January 2025, just days before Trump’s second inauguration ceremony marking his return to the White House.

The couple got engaged in December 2023, had a child the following July, and then got married in January 2025.
Karoline Leavitt/Instagram
Much has been said about the age difference between Leavitt and her husband, especially since the 60-year-old Riccio is about five years older than her mother, Erin Leavitt. Leavitt’s father is only a few years older than Riccio, at 65.
Speaking on Miranda Devine’s Pod Force One podcast, Leavitt described the awkward conversation she had with her parents to explain that her new boyfriend was much closer to their age than hers.
“It’s definitely a challenging conversation to have at first,” the 28-year-old said. “Once they got to know him and saw who he is as a man and his character and how much he adores me, I think it became quite easy for them, and now we’re all friends.”
Leavitt has previously spoken about how much her job has cut into her personal life. In July 2024, she cut short her maternity leave and returned to working on Trump’s 2024 campaign just three days after Niko was born, following the assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“I looked at my husband and said, ‘Looks like I’m going back to work,’” Leavitt told The Conservateur.
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