Zohran Mamdani & His Wife Rama's Age Gap Is Bigger Than We Realized

The young mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has been the topic of many headlines since the start of 2025. Announcing his run for the government seat in October 2024, the young assemblyman shook up the political landscape with his radical plans to make New York City more affordable. His plan for great change and charming personality won the city over and won him the position of mayor. The youngest New York mayor since the 1800s, Mamdani has broken more records as the city's first Muslim mayor and its first mayor born in Africa. By his side throughout his campaign and win has been his wife, Rama Duwaji. The pair stand as a handsome young couple among the political crowd, but their relationship follows a common trend in politicians' relationships: age gaps. 

Mamdani, born in 1991, is 34 years old at the time of reporting. His wife, on the other hand, is a few years younger than him. With Duwaji being born in 1997, she and Mamdani boast a roughly 6-year age gap between them. This is not the only gap between the two. Duwaji's work is far removed from the political aspirations of her husband. An illustrator and an animator, the young budding mayoress has worked for the New Yorker, The Washington Post, BBC, Apple, Spotify, and VICE. 

Just like any young person in the modern dating world, the mayor-elect was not shy about sharing his connection to the dating apps. Zohran Mamdani admitted on The Bulwark podcast that he and his wife met on the dating app Hinge,though he didn't disclose when their first date was. Rama Duwaji didn't move to New York until 2021 and Mamdani's first post of the Brooklyn artist wasn't until 2022. Between the time, the pair met and, as Mamdani's friend tells it, the mayor-elect knew she was the one. 

After the couple started dating, Mamdani caught up with a friend and revealed a little bit about the start of the pair's relationship in the caption to an Instagram post, "A few years ago, Zohran and I went for a run to catch up after spending a few weeks apart. About a mile in, Zohran told "I think I'm gonna marry this woman," and I knew he really meant it."

In 2025, the couple were married at the New York City Clerk's office. Since then, their whirlwind relationship has been kept mostly under wraps by the pair. The private marriage between Mamdani and Duwaji has left many speculating over their relationship. The illustrator's quiet persona and lack of public interviews has only encouraged questions toward the mayor-elect and his wife's relationship.