bostondotcom OP t1_j3mge38 wrote on January 9, 2023 at 4:18 PM

From reporter Yvonne Abraham:

As newly inaugurated Governor Maura Healey formally introduces herself and her plans to the Commonwealth, there’s one more thing she is now delighted to share.

She has a partner.

For almost two years, Healey has been in a relationship with Joanna Lydgate, an attorney and her former deputy in the attorney general’s office, who now heads a Washington nonprofit trying to safeguard our endangered democracy.

Until now, Healey has been quite circumspect when it comes to this part of her personal life. But being governor requires her to share more of herself than she did as attorney general, she said. More importantly, the women and their families are finally ready for the couple to step into view.

“I feel really happy today, being able to tell this story,” Healey said Friday evening, holding hands with Lydgate on a couch in the governor’s rented North Cambridge apartment. Healey made an unannounced move to the duplex, a converted bakery in a neighborhood of triple-deckers, just before the election.

“This is a person I love very much and I have great respect and admiration for,” the governor said.