Zohran Mamdani Says He Screenshotted His Wife’s Hinge Profile Before She Ever Matched Him Back
“I was in love from the moment I saw her photo,” Mamdani has said of his wife, Rama Duwaji. He screenshotted her Hinge profile before she’d matched him back, then planned a first date with shaking hands, calling himself “very much of a romantic.”
The whole thing started with crème brûlée. Rama Duwaji had mentioned loving it, so Mamdani built their first date around that one detail, and he’s said his hands were shaking while he planned it.
They matched on Hinge in 2021, not long after he won his New York State Assembly seat in Queens. He’s called himself “very much of a romantic,” and after only a few dates he was sure it would last.
Duwaji, born in Houston in 1997, is a Brooklyn-based illustrator and ceramicist whose work has run in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and Vogue, and shown at Tate Modern. Her parents are from Damascus, and she’s kept a low profile even as her husband ran for mayor.
The couple married in stages: a private nikah in Dubai in December 2024, a civil ceremony at the New York City Clerk’s office in February 2025, and another ceremony in Uganda that July. They took the subway to the City Hall wedding on a rainy day, bouquet in hand.
Mamdani won the 2025 mayoral race and was inaugurated on January 1, 2026. He’s talked about her at nearly every milestone, calling her “my incredible wife, Rama, hayati,” Arabic for “my life.”
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