Cheryl Hines is all smiles as she celebrates her birthday amid husband RFK Jr’s sexting scandal

Actress Cheryl Hines recently celebrated her 59th birthday - and her scandal-plagued husband was nowhere to be found.

The Curb Your Enthusiasm alum shared various posts on her Instagram stories of people wishing her a happy birthday. “Me and my girls,” she wrote alongside an image of her daughter Catherine and stepdaughter Kyra while the three of them were sitting at a restaurant together, noticeably without her husband Robert F Kennedy Jr.

Catherine also made her own post on her Instagram story at the same restaurant as her mother was about to blow out the candle on top of her dessert. “Happy birthday to the best mother,” she wrote. “I really don’t know how I got so lucky.”

Kenndey was not present for any of the birthday festivities as he was participating in a campaign rally for Donald Trump in Las Vegas that same night.

The two of them have been married since 2014, 10 years before his “personal relationship” with New York Magazine reporter Olivia Nuzzi that allegedly included them sexting each other.

On Thursday, September 19 the outlet had released a statement explaining that the 31-year-old reporter would be placed on leave. “Recently our Washington Correspondent Olivia Nuzzi acknowledged to the magazine’s editors that she had engaged in a personal relationship with a former subject relevant to the 2024 campaign while she was reporting on the campaign, a violation of the magazine’s standards around conflicts of interest and disclosures,” the statement read.

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“Had the magazine been aware of this relationship, she would not have continued to cover the presidential campaign. An internal review of her published work has found no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias. She is currently on leave from the magazine, and the magazine is conducting a more thorough third-party review. We regret this violation of our readers’ trust.”

An editor of the publication released in a staff memo one day later that they would be hiring an “independent third-party” to review Nuzzi’s 2024 writing to see if there is anything the publication must disclose or correct with the reporter’s “relationship” to the former presidential candidate.

Nuzzi’s partner Ryan Lizza, a reporter at Politico, released a statement which referred to Nuzzi as his “ex-finacée,” indicating the pair have broken up. It is not clear when the couple parted ways.

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“Because of my connection to this story through my ex-fiancée, my editors and I have agreed that I won’t be involved in any coverage of Kennedy in Playbook or elsewhere at POLITICO,” Lizza said.

After New York Magazine’s announcement, Nuzzi released a statement denying the relationship with RFK Jr was physical.

“Earlier this year, the nature of some communication between myself and a former reporting subject turned personal,” she said. “During that time, I did not directly report on the subject nor use them as a source.

She added: “The relationship was never physical but should have been disclosed to prevent the appearance of a conflict. I deeply regret not doing so immediately and apologize to those I’ve disappointed, especially my colleagues at New York.”

A Kennedy spokesperson told The New York Times that he had met Nuzzi “once in his life for an interview she requested, which yielded a hit piece.”