Life in the 21st century has taught us that love and romance is not an exclusive privilege only for couples with heterosexual disposition. Popular CNN presenter Anderson Cooper and his lover, nightclub mogul Benjamin Maisani, have been together for a long time. The couple started dating in 2009 and have been together ever since. For a celebrity couple, they have managed to keep their personal affairs private and only occasionally offer Instagram selfies and videos.
Who Is Benjamin Maisani, Anderson Cooper’s Boyfriend?
The name Anderson Cooper is definitely known to many people inside and outside the media world. The popular CNN presenter and Yale University graduate comes from money and a good deal of it. He is the son of the late author and screenwriter Wyatt Cooper and the fashion designer and heiress, Gloria Vanderbilt. His mother is the great-great-granddaughter of business magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, who built his fortune in railroading and shipping, eventually making the Vanderbilt name one of the most iconic in American history.
Anderson studied political science before deciding to switch his career to journalism. He attributes his change of heart to the suicide of his older brother in 1988. Anderson began as a fact-checker for Channel One, a small news agency for young people. Finally, he began to climb the career ladder of journalism, working as a correspondent and co-host for ABC News from 1995 to 2001. He joined CNN in 2001, where he has become one of the most celebrated news and television personalities. In 2016 he co-hosted the second presidential election debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
Benjamin Maisani does not have a portfolio nearly as robust as his partner. However, he comes from Corsica in France, which many proponents of their relationship believe played an important role in their burgeoning romance. Benjamin’s dreams were on the same scale as Anderson’s, but he wanted to be a filmmaker, not a journalist. That was the only reason he moved to New York City. After graduating from Hunter College, he took a job at the Morgan Library on Madison Avenue.
The job was not very helpful for his financial life. Maisani wanted a better-paid job so he ended up working in a gay bar called Baracuda in Chelsea. Benjamin ascribed to this job that it made him more social and self-confident, even though he remained largely a private person. He continued to work in the bar industry and eventually rose from bar salesman to bar owner. He owns his own chain of gay bars.
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Benjamin Maisani and Anderson Cooper’s Love Affair
Benjamin and Anderson were first photographed together in New York City, where they met. Both are private individuals, Benjamin more than Anderson. In various interviews, he talked about how he never wanted to be a public person in any way. Anderson is also in the same way. That’s probably why it took him three years after their relationship began in 2009 to officially announce his sexual orientation.
Since then, and especially since 2015, the couple has been providing their audience with pictures and video clips of his adventures and travels. Unforgettable is that their Instagram posts have shown them in various exotic locations around the world: Myanmar, Venice, and Tahiti, to name but a few.
The couple had several houses all over the country. One of them was a renovated firehouse hidden in Greenwich Village. They bought the house for an estimated $4.3 million in 2009 and also bought an 18-room, 10,000-square-foot Connecticut mansion worth about $9 million. Cooper also has a vacation home in Brazil and a waterfront in the Hamptons.
The couple has always seen children as an option to explore in the future. Even Cooper’s mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, has always supported him in having children and has occasionally asked him to do so. Anderson admits that he would like to have a family, but his hectic work schedule seems to get in the way for the time being.
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Are They Still Together?
The couple’s romance seemed to be growing, and many of their fans probably thought it would last forever. But in early 2018, in an interview with People and US Weekly, the CNN presenter revealed that he and Maisani had broken up some time ago. He affirmed that they still love each other very much and will always be in each other’s lives. The last picture of the couple together was taken in March 2018. It was a photo of Benjamin Maisani and Anderson Cooper leaving their Manhattan home together.
This is not a surprise to some of their followers, however, as Cooper was photographed several times with Victor Lopez, a radiologist from Dallas, a few weeks before the announcement of his separation. The photos can be found on Lopez’s Instagram page, which is set to private.
