Good Morning America co-anchor Robin Roberts and her long-time partner Amber Laign are settling in to their new lives as newlyweds. Before exchanging vows in an “enchanted garden” themed wedding ceremony in their backyard on Sept. 8, the couple opened up about their relationship, which began 18 years prior when they were introduced by mutual friends.
Opening up about their relationship with Good Morning America just a few weeks before they walked down the aisle, Roberts and Laign credited their friends for their relationship as they revealed that canceled several planned first dates with each other over the course of a year before they were eventually set up on a blind date. Laign recalled that their “two friends, my friend Alex, her friend Bert, finally said, ‘Enough, you two are going to meet,” with Roberts adding that while she told her friend she only wanted to meet Laign for drinks, she said she would kick him under the table if the date was going well and she wanted to extend it.
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“Within a few minutes [of the date], I was kicking my friend Bert under the table. And we asked if they would like to stay for dinner, and her friend couldn’t stay, but she did,” she said, with Laign remembering “just walking up and she’s just beautiful, and she took my breath away, and she still does.”
Romance was quick to spark for Laign and Roberts, who at the time had recently made the move from ESPN to GMA, where she anchored alongside Charles Gibson and Diane Sawyer. However, Laign said she didn’t watch GMA and also didn’t follow sports coverage, so she had to Google Roberts to find out who she was. As their romance blossomed, Laign said she began to go out of her way to see more of Roberts, even changing her route walking to work every day to allow her to cut through Times Square.
“I’d cut through Times Square and Sam [Champion] would be doing the weather. And when Sam would do the weather, Robin would walk over to the windows and she’d wave and we would time it,” she said. “It just put a little extra pep in my step. I don’t know how we finally got the timing down, but that went on for quite a while.”
Just two years into their relationship, Roberts was diagnosed with an early form of breast cancer. Roberts said Laign chose to stay by her side, earning her the name “Sweet Amber.” Roberts said of the nickname, “it’s just the aura about her. She’s so kind. She’s just really, really kind, and it’s so genuine, you know? It’s not trying to be anything other than who she is.” Over the years, Roberts and Laign experienced other hardships, including Robert’s myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) diagnosis, and more recently, Laign’s breast cancer diagnosis.
“It can either tear you apart or bring you closer together, and thank the good Lord, it brought us closer together,” Roberts said. “We are partners. We will do whatever it takes, and I think that the illnesses that we have gone through, and are going through, have only strengthened us and made us more compassionate with each other and have a better understanding of each other.”
While Roberts and Laign said they discussed marriage on and off throughout their relationship, they said it was during the COVID-19 pandemic that they “were like, yeah, we kind of like being around each other almost 24/7.” After becoming engaged in late 2022 and announcing their engagement in January of this year, Roberts and Laign tied the knot in a romantic ceremony in their backyard officiated by Roberts’ childhood pastor. Of Laign, Roberts told GMA, “many people go into marriage hoping for and looking for what Amber and I already know we have, and so ours is a celebration. We’ve been living our happily ever after through all the ups and downs, so it’s a celebration.”
