TRACKING>>The newly engaged Prime Minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, has revealed why she is wearing her engagement ring on the middle finger.
“I have not been trying to hide our news from anyone. It’s Clarke’s grandmother’s ring and it simply does not fit on the right finger; that’s why it’s sitting on the middle,’’Ardern said during her weekly post cabinet press conference on Monday.
The 38-year-old said that she and her partner, Clarke Gayford, with whom she has a 10-month-old daughter, Neve, had yet to make any plans for wedding.
On Friday, her spokesperson confirmed that the politician had become engaged to be married, after journalists spotted her new jewellery.
While she said she wanted to keep details about how the proposal happened to herself, she said that it was “Clarke, myself and a member of the DPS (Diplomatic Protection Service) very intimate.’’
“There were also a couple of locals from Mahia, on the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island, in the Hawke’s Bay region, where Gayford’s family lives, and a dog that tried to eat the chocolate Clarke bought for me, so it was very romantic,’’ she added.
She implied that her partner did not go down on one knee to pop the question.
“The DPS were up there and they had no idea what had happened; that should be a bit of a giveaway to you,’’ she said.
Gayford, the presenter of a TV fishing show, has been the primary caregiver for daughter Neve.
The couple made world-wide headlines when Gayford watched with then three-month-old Neve in the United Nations Generaly Assembly as Ardern spoke.
