Rosie O’Donnell Confirms Engagement Rumors

Rosie O’Donnell is engaged. The former View co-host said she is planning to marry Elizabeth Rooney.

O’Donnell, 56, shared the happy news with PEOPLE on Monday at an event for her Rose’s Theater Kids organization in New York City. She called Rooney, a 33-year-old Army veteran, a “wonderful woman.”

Rooney also confirmed the news Monday night by sharing a photo of the engagement ring. “Yes,” she wrote, adding an engagement ring emoji and a heart.

The Emmy-winner said the couple have been dating long distance since November 2017.

“She lives in Boston now and I live here in New York. It’s been a long-distance thing. It’s been great. I think she’s a wonderful woman,” O’Donnell said. “She’s very much an equal, she’s very much her own person and loves what she does. She’s a pretty unbelievable young woman.”

O’Donnell joked about the 23-year-old age gap, even telling PEOPLE she reminded Rooney she is “too old for her, but she doesn’t seem to care.”

“She’s like, ‘I was in the Army! I put my life on the line every day you think I don’t know who I want to date?’ I’m like, ‘Alright I guess that’s true,’” O’Donnell said. “She has a lot of good points.”

The wedding is still a “long time in the future,” the couple decided, according to O’Donnell.

This will be O’Donnell’s third marriage. In 2004, she was briefly married to her partner Kelli Carpenter-O’Donnell when then-San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, but their union was annulled like thousands of others because California had not made same-sex marriage legal yet. They separated in 2007. She shares four children with Carpenter-O’Donnell – daughters Chelsea and Vivienne, 15, and sons Parker, 23, and Black, 18.

O’Donnell was married to Michelle Rounds from 2012 to 2015. They adopted a daughter, Dakota, 5. In September 2017, Rounds died from a suicide.

On Oct. 8, Radar Online reported that O’Donnell and Rooney were engaged, but the couple wanted to keep the news a secret because Rooney now works as a police officer in Worcester, Massachusetts.

“They’re very, very happy. I do believe that this will see its full life-term expectancy,” a source told Radar.

Rooney appeared to confirm the news before O’Donnell did by adding an engagement ring emoji earlier this month.

Photo Credit: Astrid Stawiarz/Getty Images for Family Equality Council