Andrew Cuomo uttered mystery remark to ex Sandra Lee that ended relationship, famous chef reveals
Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo uttered a mystery comment to then-girlfriend Sandra Lee that ultimately ended the power couple’s already-crumbling relationship, the famous television chef revealed in a new interview.
Lee, who was with the scandal-scarred pol for more than a decade, told US Weekly the deteriorating bond came to a close in the spring 2019 inside the Westchester County house the pair shared.
“I was in my kitchen and he said something, and the minute he said it, I knew what he’d just said,” she recalled to the glossy magazine. “And every window and door closed. And that was it … He knows what it is; I know what it is.”
Lee, 58, declined to reveal what was said by Cuomo, but outlined other problems the pair faced.
She said Cuomo, 66, had grown increasingly distant during their relationship, and in 2015 he even missed most of her birthday following her double mastectomy as she battled breast cancer.
“I spent the day by myself,” she told US Weekly. “I was sitting on my lawn alone … I’m not someone who feels sorry for themselves, but that day was a bit much for me.”
She noted while he later came home and they went out to dinner, she was already hurt.
Page Six reported in May 2019 the two were no longer living together amid rumors they split up, but reps for both Lee and Cuomo denied at the time they had broken up.
Then in September 2019, the two finally acknowledged their relationship came to an end.
She told US Weekly the last ten years have been the “most challenging decade of my life.”
“I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I will never get over the heartbreak loss of the last ten years,” said Lee, who also lost an uncle to a terminal illness in December 2023. “The grief has been endless but I will use it to fuel and feed me and make me wiser and stronger.”
The “Semi-Homemade Cooking” star met Algerian actor Ben Youcef following her high-profile breakup with Cuomo and the two got engaged in 2021.
When she first started dating Youcef, she said she felt like a “virgin.”
“I hadn’t been intimate in years and years. I literally felt like a virgin at 55 and I just didn’t want to get involved again,” she said in her US Weekly interview.
When asked for differences between Youcef and Cuomo, Lee credited her 45-year-old fiancé for being “very patient” and “very transparent.”
“He checks in all the time, and shares everything with me. He loves helping people without agenda or motive,” she said in a possible swipe at Cuomo.
“He truly tries to be a better human every day,” she said of new beau.
A spokesperson for Cuomo, who resigned from office in 2021 as allegations of sexual harassment against him grew, said in a statement to US Weekly “there are always two sides of the story.” He reportedly said he cleared his schedule on Lee’s birthday in 2015 and claims he did not see Lee around the time the mysterious remark was made in 2019.
