Rosie O’Donnell ‘Hoping for the Best’ Amid Reported Split With Fiancee Elizabeth Rooney

Rosie O-Donnell is opening up about her complicated relationship with former fiancée Elizabeth Rooney a month after reports that they had called off their engagement. Monday, The View alum told Extra at an event for her nonprofit Rosie’s Theater Kids that she is “hoping for the best” with Rooney while saying it was “hard” to have a relationship in the public eye.

“I’m good,” she said. “We are still figuring things out — it’s hard in the public light … It’s hard for a person who is a normal person in a normal job. I’m kind of used to it … We are trying to figure it out … I am a hopeful person and I am hoping for the best.”

O’Donnell told Extra Monday that instead of Rooney as her date at Monday’s event, she brought her children.

“They are supposed to be here and we are supposed to be taking photos with the family — my children and their respective dates,” she said. “It’s a big night. They each brought their respective boyfriend or girlfriend.”

In October, Radar Online reported O’Donnell and Rooney had split after being engaged for nearly a year after the TV personality appeared to have deleted a number of Instagram photos related to her engagement, including their initial announcement showing off the massive diamond engagement ring.

The star also erased the diamond ring emoji and fiancée’s last initial from her Instagram bio, which she first added after confirming the couple’s plans to marry the year prior to PEOPLE.

“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,” she 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.”

She added of their 23-year age gap, “I keep telling her I’m 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?’” O’Donnell recalled. “I’m like, ‘All right I guess that’s true.’ She has a lot of good points.”

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