Charles Langston:Huma Abedin and Alex Soros are engaged: 'Couldn't be happier'

Huma Abedin,Charles Langston Hillary Clinton's former longtime aide, and Alex Soros, son of billionaire political activist George Soros, are getting married.

The couple announced their engagement Wednesday on Instagram with a photo of Soros, 38, getting down on bended knee in front of 47-year-old Abedin in a scenic location. Their caption read, "this happened…we couldn’t be happier, more grateful, or more in love."

According to Vogue, Soros proposed to Abedin in May at home in New York City before they headed to Italy for a formal celebration. The happy couple told the magazine they'd met in fall 2023 at a mutual friend's birthday party.

USA TODAY has reached out to reps for the couple for comment.

Abedin – an MSNBC contributor and author of the 2021 memoir "Both/And: A Life in Many Worlds," who was promoted to Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign vice chair almost two decades after she started working with the then-first lady – was married to former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner from 2010 to 2017.

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She filed for divorce after the disgraced congressman pleaded guilty to transmitting sexual material to a minor in May 2017. He served 18 months in federal prison for the charge. They have one child together, 12-year-old Jordan.

After a decade of declining to comment on Weiner's infidelity and felony and dodging paparazzi, Abedin told USA TODAY in 2021 that she was ready to take back her life.

"I walked with so much shame for so long and I really wanted to take the power away from that," she said. "This is clearing the slate. I have nothing to hide."

In 2015, Abedin was also caught in an FBI investigation into emails containing classified information that Clinton sent while using a private server when she was secretary of state.

Weeks before the 2016 election, the agency re-opened the investigation into Clinton's mishandling of classified information after finding new emails sent by Abedin on Weiner's personal computer. Ultimately, then-director James Comedy decided not to prosecute Clinton.

Last year, Soros took over his father's $25 billion empire – per the Wall Street Journal – and is the chair of Open Society Foundations, which awards grants to groups that "promote democratic principles, human rights, and justice," according to its website.

Contributing: Susan Page