How Albo and Jodie’s romance started
Anthony Albanese has married Jodie Haydon in a union that proves even prime ministers aren’t immune to the power of a well-timed DM. But it wasn’t before he endured some dark days.
Theirs is the most modern of a love story, even if it isn’t especially prime ministerial.
Eighteen months after the break-up of his first marriage, then opposition leader Anthony Albanese was the keynote speaker at an event where an attractive woman boldly shouted her support for his favourite team.
A short while later that attractive woman, Jodie Haydon, would make the first move and slide into his DM’s with a “hey, we’re both single”.
It’s the 40+ version of “u up?” and it began a romance that, on Saturday, culminated in a wedding.
Haydon and Albanese have never revealed publicly what he replied, but we do know they next met by coincidence at a function, where he invited her for a drink at hipster Newton brewery Young Henrys.
When it closed they made the three-minute stroll around the corner to since-closed Turkish joint Stanbuli, the one with the famous pink pastel door.
The whole story is so “everyman” that one could be forgiven for thinking it was manufactured by Albo’s spin doctors to lean into the working class bloke, just like the image he was trying to curate as he made his play to lead the country.
But it is their love story and they are sticking to it.
After that very-inner-west first date, their courtship continued clandestinely at various Marrickville establishments as their connection grew before Albanese upped the ante and invited Haydon to the Woodford Folk Festival, where they would spend several nights sharing shipping container sleeping quarters.
“It was really early on to sort of dive in like that. We barely knew each other. It was the first time we had been away together and, romantically, we stayed in a shipping container, which is what you do at Woodford,’’ told the Sunday Telegraph in an interview in 2022.
The pair’s shared love of music and the opportunity for Haydon to see a more relaxed, even playful side, of Albanese bonded them further.
But it was the pandemic-induced lockdowns that really helped the couple’s love grow, particularly without the glare of the public gaze.
Their blossoming love in lockdown echoed the everyman narrative of their early meeting. They spent time cooking together, binge watching shows and listening to music – just like the rest of us.
They haven’t mentioned it but there’s no doubt they also stressed about the nationwide shortage of toilet paper – just like the rest of us.
But in June 2020 the couple’s relationship was no longer a secret, with the pair photographed dining at China Doll.
A besotted Albanese was pictured laughing and looking relaxed, serving rice for himself and his new love, before they leant in for a tender kiss.
Albo’s bachelor days were over and Haydon’s previously quiet life was splashed in the headlines.
Until that day, she said, she had never been in the paper.
That would all change as the couple took their love public, as Albanese took his campaign to be prime minister on the road.
When he won the 2022 election, returning Labor to government after a lengthy stint in opposition, Haydon was by his side as he claimed victory.
Dressed, appropriately, in Labor red she would be by his side through his first term as the nation’s leader – a glamorous addition to what could been the Lodge as a bachelor pad if she hadn’t shouted “up the Rabbitohs” and slid into his DM’s.
She has been there as he has met world leaders, she was with him at the funeral of Queen Elizabeth, and she was again with him when he claimed victory, and a second term as Prime Minister this year.
Throughout, she has kept her career – saying when their relationship became public knowledge that “my job will be to focus on my day job and allow Anthony to focus on his”
And she has done that, maintaining her career in financial services, while adding some “first girlfriend” — or “first fiancee” more lately — duties to her load, including patron of the National Portrait Gallery and Ambassador for childhood cancer charity Redkite.
When the Prime Minister proposed on Valentine’s Day last year, the announcement was made, appropriately and somewhat sentimentally, on the platform formerly known as Twitter – the same place she slid into his DMs all those years ago.
She has effortlessly, and elegantly, navigated the choppy waters of being a political spouse — rarely dancing with controversy, never standing in the shadows but also never stealing the spotlight, and always armed with a dazzling smile that does truly seem to take the Prime Minister’s breath away.
In fact, the closest Haydon has come to controversy in their two-election, six-year relationship is last year when the couple purchased a $4.3 million home in Copacabana on the NSW Central Coast, where she grew up, with some criticising them for the lavish purchase during a cost of living crisis.
Instead, Haydon has been largely praised for challenging the norms for political spouses, who are often expected to give up their careers.
And now their very modern relationship has reached its zenith as the couple wed.
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Originally published as How Albo and Jodie’s romance started
