Television personality Rachel Maddow and partner Susan Mikula have been together since 1999.
It seems Rachel Maddow is a dedicated person in both her career and love life. The television host started her career in 1999 as a co-host on WRNX Radio’s The Dave in the Morning Show. Seven years later, she entered the world of cable television as a regular commentator on MSNBC’s The Situation with Tucker Carlson.
She has hosted her own show, The Rachel Maddow Show, since 2008 when she became the first openly gay anchor to host a major prime-time news program in the United States. Maddow has been with long-time artist girlfriend, Susan Mikula, since 1999. Although the two are not married, and reportedly are not in a rush to wed, Mikula has been by Maddow’s side for quite a while.
Read on to learn more about Mikula and her relationship with Maddow:
1. Mikula Is an Artist & Photographer
Rachel Maddow speaks onstage at the XX panel during Advertising Week 2015 AWXII at the Times Center Stage. Maddow has hosted her own MSNBC show since 2008. (Getty)
Mikula takes photographs on her SX-70 Polaroid camera, which was last manufactured in 2007. As you can imagine, she has a hard time finding film for her camera, but she finds instant film on eBay and at yard sales and junk stores, according to SF Gate.
Her soft images usually have a greenish-yellow hue because color often drops out of old film. In her latest completed series of prints, “Photo Book,” she tells a story using antique toys.
“I’m sure I was thinking of my own childhood and how much I was deeply affected by children’s literature. I wanted to tell a children’s tale my way, with pictures, but in the same way that children’s books always have something vaguely magical and a child at the center. In this case the child is a little girl, and she has the power.”
While Mikula takes photographs, some of which she displays on her website, Maddow hosts her MSNBC show weekdays at 9 p.m., The Rachel Maddow Show. This Emmy Award winning show, “features Maddow’s take on the biggest stories of the day, political and otherwise, including lively debate with guests from all sides of the issues, in-depth analysis and stories no other shows in cable news will cover,” according to her bio on the website.
2. They’ve Been Together Since 1999, but Say They Don’t Feel Pressure to Get Married
Partners Rachel Maddow and Susan Mikula mix drinks at MSNBC.com’s Digital Cafe in Rockefeller Center. (Flickr/Eric Susch)
Although the two have been together for quite a while, they aren’t in too much of a hurry to get married. Maddow said in a 2011 interview:
“I feel that gay people not being able to get married for generations, forever, meant that we came up with alternative ways of recognizing relationships. And I worry that if everybody has access to the same institutions that we lose the creativity of subcultures having to make it on their own. And I like gay culture.”
Not that Maddow is against gay marriage, the two just don’t “feel any urgency.”
3. The Couple Lives in a Farmhouse in Massachusetts With Their Black Lab
Rachel Maddow speaks onstage at the XX panel during Advertising Week 2015. Maddow is known for her honest, humorous and intelligent opinions on her show.
Maddow and Mikula share a pre–Civil War farmhouse in Western Massachusetts in addition to their West Village apartment in New York City. They mainly live in their Massachusetts home on weekends and have worked hard to keep the “original bones” of the property in order to preserve the history, according to New York Magazine.
“Having a place out of the city is a shortcut toward the mental reset I need,” Mikula told People.
The 58-year-old artist and 43-year-old television show host also live with their black lab Poppy.
4. They Met When Mikula Hired Maddow to do Yard Work
Rachel Maddow discusses the headlines of the day in Emens Auditorium at Ball State University. Maddow has her doctorate in political science from Oxford University.(Getty)
The couple met in 1999, when Mikula hired Maddow, who was working on getting her doctoral dissertation and doing odd jobs, to do some yard work at her home in the Berkshires.
“It was very Desperate Housewives,” says Maddow of how their relationship began, according to People.
Their first date was actually at a National Rifle Association event.
“My first date with Susan was at an NRA ‘Ladies Day On The Range’ event, and that is as close as I have ever gotten to the NRA”, said Maddow according to Buzzfeed.
5. Mikula & Maddow Are Both Published Authors
Rachel Maddow, host of MSNBC’s primetime hit, the critically acclaimed The Rachel Maddow Show, attends a luncheon hosted by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. (Getty)
Maddow is the author of Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power, which debuted at #1 on the New York Times bestsellers list in March 2012, according to NBC News.
In the New York Time’s review of Drift, Maddow’s book is said to be a balanced and serious argument about the American military with American history woven in.
Mikula had written Susan Mikula: u.X, Susan Mikula: American Bond, which is a three-part series of industrial landscapes, and Susan Mikula: Photographs, 2008.
