Robin Roberts says she will marry her partner of almost 18 years

‘Good Morning America’ co-anchor Robin Roberts made a surprise announcement on ABC’s morning show on Monday, saying she was ready to wed girlfriend of nearly 18 years, Amber Laign.

“I hesitate because I haven’t said it out loud yet. OK, I’m saying ‘yes’ to marriage,” Roberts told motivational speaker and author Gabby Bernstein during a conversation about setting intentions for the new year. “We’re getting married this year.”

Roberts added that she and Laign, whom she started dating in 2005, previously discussed marriage but “delayed” it after Laign was diagnosed with breast cancer in late 2021.

Laign, co-founder of women’s wellness brand Plant Juice Oils, wrapped up her outreach in July. Roberts herself was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007, before being diagnosed with myelodysplastic syndrome, a disease of the bone marrow, in 2012.

The couple’s decision to wed comes amid a nationwide rise in same-sex couple households.

For the first time, the number of same-sex couple households in the United States topped one million, data from the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey showed in November.

In 2021, there were more than 1.2 million same-sex couple households across the country, up from 540,000 in 2008, an increase of more than 120%, the data shows.

The number of same-sex married households began to exceed the number of same-sex unmarried households in 2016, following the landmark 2015 Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, who effectively legalized same-sex marriage in the United States.

Last month, President Joe Biden signed legislation to codify federal protections for same-sex and interracial marriages. The measure, titled the Respect for Marriage Act, passed Congress with bipartisan support.