by Irene Soave
The outgoing Prime Minister of Finland married her partner in 2020. The two have a five-year-old daughter, Emma Amalia. The statement on Instagram
Finnish tabloids, including the relentless Iltalehti, which had already published photos of the Prime Minister’s scandalous night parties in the summer, have been in an uproar since February. Sanna Marin and her husband Markus Rikknen had just got divorced and were only waiting for the elections, from which she then emerged as the loser, and a polite joint statement announcing the separation was already in the drawers of a PR Agency in the gossip capital.
Yesterday the formal, or rather informal, announcement was made with an identical Instagram story from both of them. In the photo of Markus and Sanna, smiling and close, a few lines of explanation. We filed for divorce. We are mutually grateful for the 19 years together and for our beloved daughter. We are still each other’s best friends and loving parents. We will continue to spend time together as a family and with each other.
Nineteen years together, for the 37 that Marin turned last November, and for the contemporary Rikknen, more than half a lifetime: in the United States they’re called starter marriages. It seems to be the case that Marin and Rikknen have been dating since before graduation and have only been married since 2020; Presidential couple since 2019, Emma Amalia’s parents since 2018 and since last summer at the latest, they have been further and further apart. So does Iltalehti, who says: The gap is caused by too many changes. Implied in her life.
They met in a bar in his hometown of Tampere. He said that in the only interview he ever did with his wife for Vogue, he was attracted to her because of her serious nature. He is a soccer player, she is a combative social democrat. In 2018 the arrival of Emma, in 2019 her election as prime minister: perhaps the only profession for which there is no maternity leave in Finland. Rikknen, a former Tampere Pallio-Veiko centre-forward whom the coach described as reliable and now a venture capitalist, was happy to take a majority stake in Emma’s management.
Low-key, away from the limelight, just before the paparazzi’s choice at the disco with a new girlfriend, Markus Rikknen was a slightly faded first gentleman to the malicious. Elected in 2019 at the age of 34 as the then youngest leader in the world, Sanna Marin managed first the pandemic and then her entry into NATO with seriousness and charisma. In view of the national debt, the international attention was not enough to get her re-elected in April 2023. She resigned from leadership of the Social Democratic Party immediately afterwards.
But in the meantime the metamorphosis has taken place: from the plump and serious elect in a knee-length black suit to the clay star in a leather jacket (yesterday, before the divorce was announced, a story in which she runs at an athlete’s pace). In full compliance, NATO even indulges in concerts and parties. In the romantic comedy clichés in which gossip stories from all over the world practice these cases, a new look is usually the prelude to parting; More so than Granit-Joachim Sauer, always at Angela Merkel’s side, he reminds of Nate from “The Devil Wears Prada” in the reconstructions of the well-informed. A domestic, languid little man, he would not have upheld the new splendor of his lifelong companion.
There are no marriage contracts between them. They recently bought a house in a neoclassical building in the capital’s elegant Tl district. When the new government takes office and she has to leave the official residence of Kesranta, she will move on her own.
May 10, 2023 (Modification May 10, 2023 | 8:36 p.m.)
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