If you’ve ever wondered how Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Cory Booker keeps the spark alive with girlfriend Rosario Dawson while on the campaign trail we’ve finally gotten an answer.
According to a Washington Post profile published Thursday, while talking about her relationship with the New Jersey senator, Dawson opened up about how they stay connected even when their careers require them to spend months apart. Apparently a significant portion of their long distance “quality time” is spent reading books to each other over the phone and video-chatting via FaceTime.
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In the article Dawson recalls how she suggested they started reading Alice Sebold’s novel The Lovely Bones together, which then prompted her beloved to make a recommendation of his own, City of Thieves, which is Game of Thrones writer David Benioff’s historical fiction novel set in World War II.
Dawson, 40, says Booker committed to reading City of Thieves in its entirety to her over the phone, a 258 page feat that would have taken approximately five-to-eight hours to finish.
“I laugh because it’s like, ‘Okay, you’re flying and connecting through here. Maybe we can meet at the airport hotel,’ ” Booker said in an interview last week, about dating while running for president. “It has made for great adventures of, you know, making seven hours together be magical.”
The couple recently celebrated their one-year anniversary on October 14th and it turns out that this isn’t the first time Booker has used reading as a way to show his love in a relationship.
“[We] decided we should read books together,” he told The New York Times back in 2016 while discussing another long-distance relationship he was in. “Before I knew it, we were reading the book out loud to each other, over the phone, and I was drawn in. Soon we were reading chapters on our own, and she was telling me to slow down and not get too far ahead.”
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Other fun facts revealed about the couple during this new profile include how they have bonded over their shared vegan lifestyle. Also, their music tastes are so similar Booker often sends Dawson new song recommendations in the morning to let her know he’s thinking of her. He’s also given her the nickname RIB, which would become her initials if they got married and she took his surname.
“Not everybody has good initials,” she says. “He’s my anchor. He’s my guy, you know. He’s very presumptuous. My initials are R-I-D. But he calls me RIB.”
“Look, both of us, you know, we’ve had relationships,” says Booker, “but I’m not sure if I’ve ever fully given myself over to a relationship as much as I have with her and allowed myself to be as vulnerable.”