I Finnish tabloids, including the implacable Evening newspaper which had already published the photos of the premier’s “scandalous” night parties in the summer, had been buzzing since February. Sanna Marin and her husband Markus Räikkönen would have been in the process of divorcing, awaiting only the elections from which she then came out as a loser, and a polite joint statement in which they announced the separation would have already been in the drawers of a PR agency of the gossip capital.
Yesterday the formal announcement, or rather informal, with a story of Instagram published, identical, by both. On 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 we have shared 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 he completed last November and for his contemporary Räikkönen, it is more than half of his life: in the United States they are called «starter marriages». It seems the case of Marin and Räikkönen, together since before graduating, but married only since 2020; since 2019 presidential couple, Emma Amalia’s parents since 2018 and at least since last summer “gradually further away from each other”. so theEvening newspaper, which sentences: the fracture arises from too many changes. Implied, in her life.
They met in a bar in his native Tampere, he had said he was “attracted to her for her serious air” in the only interview he has ever given with his wife, a Vogue. He is a footballer, she is a militant social democrat. In 2018 the arrival of Emma, in 2019 her election as premier: perhaps the only profession for which, in Finland, maternity leave is not provided. Räikkönen, former Tampere Pallio-Veiko center forward whom the coach described as “reliable”, now a venture capitalist, he notes gladly the majority stake in the management of Emma.
Reserved, away from the spotlight, just before the vote but paparazzi in the disco with a new girl, Markus Räikkönen was, for the malicious, a first gentleman a little faded. Elected in 2019 at 34 years old, then the youngest leader in the world, Sanna Marin first managed the pandemic and then her entry into NATO with seriousness and charisma. International attention was not enough, in the face of public debt, to get her re-elected in April 2023. She resigned from the leadership of the social democratic party immediately afterwards.
But in the meantime the metamorphosis: from plump and serious, elected in a knee-length black suit, to tonic star in a leather jacket (yesterday, before the announcement of the divorce, a story in which he runs at an athlete’s pace) who in full membership of NATO even indulges in concerts and parties. In comedy clichés romantic where gossips from all over the world practice such cases, a new look is usually a prelude to parting; him, more than the granite Joachim Sauer always alongside Angela Merkelrecalls Nate di in the reconstructions of the well-informed The devil wears Prada. Domestic, slothful little man, he would not have been able to handle the new splendor of his lifelong companion.
There are no prenuptial agreements between them. You have recently bought a house in a neoclassical building in the elegant Töölö district of the capital. When the new government takes office, and you will have to leave the official residence of Kesäranta, she will move by herself.