Sean Hannity and Ainsley Earhardt’s relationship has always raised red flags. For starters, Hannity and Earhardt have a scandalous relationship timeline. When news of their romance became public in mid-2020, “The Sean Hannity Show” host was supposed to be a married man. Hannity and the “Fox & Friends” co-host made their first semi-public appearance as a couple in August 2019, when they attended the now-U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Jennifer Rauchet’s wedding together.
Even their colleagues were shocked. “Hannity emerged from the chopper with [Fox & Friends host] Ainsley Earhardt, and they made this grand entrance together,” a former Fox executive told Vanity Fair. “People were like, Wow, okay.” In August 2019, many believed Hannity was still married to ex-wife Jill Rhodes, as the two did not announce their divorce until a few days after the Vanity Fair article. Interestingly, the timely announcement revealed they had divorced the previous year.
What’s more, Hannity and Rhodes also shared that they had been separated for several years, though the public didn’t know. “Amicable agreements were entered into over four years ago between Sean and Jill. They maintain a close relationship as parents to their children,” their statement read. So Hannity and Earhardt’s relationship didn’t start with infidelity as it had previously seemed. But that doesn’t mean their romance doesn’t have plenty of other red flags. From planning a long-distance marriage, to doing very little wedding planning, to having a pretty considerable age gap, there’s no shortage of strange things about Earhardt and Hannity’s relationship.
Ainsley Earhardt is much younger than Sean Hannity
They might have been dubbed the “first couple” of Fox News, but Ainsley Earhardt and Sean Hannity have an uncomfortable age gap. Born in September 1976, Earhardt is nearly 15 years younger than Hannity, born in December 1961. When Earhardt welcomed her daughter Hayden in November 2015, Hannity was about to celebrate his 54th birthday. Of course, their age gap didn’t go unnoticed. “She’s 48, he’s 62. I wonder what they have in common,” one netizen wrote on X in December 2024, when Earhardt and Hannity announced their engagement.
Others drew parallels with the country’s actual first couple. “Hannity looks like her dad…kinda like [Donald] trump and melania [Trump]!” a user noted referring to the Trumps’ 24-year gap. Other users were surprised that the age difference wasn’t wider. “The years have not been kind to Mr Hannity. Spending two decades lying to his audience 5 days a week takes a toll,” one highlighted. Others agreed he looked much older than Earhardt. “She looks like his granddaughter,” another user said.
Earhardt’s romance with Hannity wasn’t her first age-gap relationship. Earhardt’s ex-husband, Will Proctor, was born in November 1983, making him seven years younger than Earhardt. This means she got the short end of the stick in both relationships. According to a 2010 study published by the National Library of Medicine, “having a younger spouse is beneficial for men but detrimental for women, while having an older spouse is detrimental for both sexes.”
Sean Hannity moved away from Ainsley Earhardt
In January 2024, Sean Hannity announced a major life change straight from Donald Trump’s playbook. “I’ve been threatening now to do this for quite a while,” he said on his iHeartRadio broadcast (via The Guardian). “But we are now beginning our first broadcast from my new home and that is in the free state of Florida. I am out. I am done. I’m finished.” While the move sent a clear message about his politics, it sent mixed signals about his relationship.
Just like that, Hannity moved more than 1,000 miles from Ainsley Earhardt. And she can’t really move considering “Fox & Friends” shoots in New York and Hayden’s father also lives there. So, she’ll continue to fly out to the Sunshine State to see Hannity on weekends, even after they tie the knot. “It’s not conventional. We live on opposite ends of the East coast but when you love someone, you make it work,” she told the Daily Mail in July. The way they make it work requires a lot more work on Earhardt’s part.
Every Friday, she picks up Hayden, jets off to Florida, and returns on Sundays. But she enjoys her time at Hannity’s $23.5 million home, so it works for her — especially because she wasn’t willing to leave her old life behind. “I love my time with Sean in Palm Beach. We always do a family brunch after church on Sunday and then Hayden and I fly back. I love my New York life, too,” she said.
Ainsley Earhardt and Sean Hannity have no wedding date
Six months after their engagement, Ainsley Earhardt and Sean Hannity still had no solid plans for their wedding. They don’t seem to have given it much thought, though they know they don’t want to make a big deal of it. “We’re both such public figures and we’ve both done this before,” she explained to the Daily Mail. Earhardt deeming her wedding unworthy of a big celebration just because they’ve both walked down the aisle before could be a major red flag.
As it stands, the only plan is to have a private ceremony with their children as the witnesses. Hannity has two children, Merri and Patrick, who are young adults, while Earhardt just has the one daughter. While they haven’t shared where they plan to hold the festivities, there has been speculation that they may have it at Mar-a-Lago. As the Independent pointed out, Donald Trump’s Palm Beach resort is just a six-minute drive from Hannity’s new home. It’s not a far-fetched hypothesis given that Hannity is friends with and an unofficial adviser to the president.
Earhardt is also a fan of Trump, so it’s plausible, though we won’t know until they share details of their nuptials with the public — if they ever do. Their unwillingness to discuss their wedding may sound off, but it’s consistent with how they’ve treated their relationship from the beginning. After all, they managed to keep it under wraps for years.
Ainsley Earhardt and Sean Hannity think a lot about divorce
Ainsley Earhardt and Sean Hannity may be planning a wedding, but they seemingly can’t keep divorce out of their minds. In fact, that’s what they were discussing when he popped the question at a Palm Beach church. “We sat in the first pew for a while and chatted about our relationship and the pain of all we’d gone through but how wonderful it was that God has redeemed us and given us love again,” she shared with the Daily Mail. “Then he walked up to the altar, went down on one knee, pulled out a ring box and he proposed to me.”
That wasn’t the only time divorce came up as they discussed their nuptials. Earhardt revealed she and Hannity will sign a prenup, even though it’s not the most romantic thing to discuss. “Divorce happens,” she said. Earhardt, with two failed marriages in her relationship history, learned that firsthand. “Nobody walks down the aisle and plans for a divorce. I was a really strong Christian, and I wanted to be married forever to one person. Life didn’t work out that way for me,” she said.
Earhardt divorced her college sweetheart, Kevin McKinney, in 2009, right when her career was taking off. Her divorce from Will Proctor came in 2019 , the same year Hannity divorced his wife of more than 25 years. But Earhardt still hoped to find love again. “I want to demonstrate a loving relationship for Hayden one day,” she told People in 2019.
Sean Hannity and Ainsley Earhardt’s romance has a complicated timeline
Ainsley Earhardt and Sean Hannity’s relationship timeline was a mystery from the beginning. According to Earhardt, Hannity first asked her out on a date in 2020, she revealed to the Daily Mail. However, many have claimed their relationship started before then. Their romance became public in June 2020, when Vanity Fair interviewed guests who had been at Pete Hegseth and Jennifer Rauchet’s wedding the previous year. But many claimed they had been an item for at least some time at that point.
“I knew they were involved. I saw it when we were all together,” a Fox News staffer told the magazine. Another insider made an even bolder claim. “[They have] been seeing each other very secretively for years,” the source told People that same month. The insider claimed that Hannity was the one who wanted to keep the relationship away from the public. “He’s very private because he’s very famous and he’s very controversial,” the source added. “But it’s been an open secret that they have been seeing each other.”
In her 2019 interview with People, Earhardt made it clear there was no significant other in her life, referring to herself as a “single mother.” And in the Daily Mail interview, she contended she didn’t know Hannity had gone through a divorce at first. “Nobody did. It was very private. I only found out when we started comparing notes and stories because he knew I had gone through mine,” she said.
