Before Bradley Cooper, Huma Abedin endured years of betrayal by Anthony Weiner

Multiple reports say that movie star Bradley Cooper and loyal Hillary Clinton aide Huma Amedin are dating, after being introduced by Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour — creating the potential for a new American power couple at the center of Hollywood, politics and fashion.

Cooper, 47, and Abedin, 45, have been seeing each other for “a few months,” according to Page Six, which was first to report the news. In May, Abedin admitted to The Guardian that she had begun dating again without naming names, more than five years after she filed for divorce from disgraced politician Anthony Weiner.

“I’m trying to stay open, but dating is terrifying, which also makes it exciting,” Abedin said. “I believe in love – I had it, I know what it felt like, I’d love to have that feeling again.”

Certainly, she and Cooper both understand what it means to carry on a relationship in the glare of the spotlight. Cooper and Irina Shayk, his ex-partner and the mother of his 5-year-old daughter, stayed together until after he was done promoting “A Star is Born” during the 2019 Oscars race — and after he spent months ignoring rumors that he had became romantically involved with co-star Lady Gaga.

But Abedin, much more than Cooper or other famous people, knows what it’s like to have one’s personal choices vigorously questioned amid scandal and national turmoil.

According to the latest reports, Abedin may still be in the process of finalizing her divorce from Weiner, five years after he pleaded guilty and went to prison for sending illicit messages to a 15-year-old girl.

Abedin, who began dating Weiner in 2007 and married him in 2010, stuck by the brash and charismatic politico through not one, but two sexting controversies prior to announcing their split. The first scandal ended his career as a U.S. congressman in 2011, and the second derailed his chance to be elected New York mayor in 2013. Abedin finally separated from Weiner, who used the online alias “Carlos Danger,” in 2016. But she didn’t divorce him, even after the New York Post reported that he sent a photo of himself, visibly aroused, to another woman, while lying in bed next to his and Abedin’s toddler son.

Abedin also has had to put up with Democrats and Clinton supporters blaming her for possibly helping her boss lose the 2016 election to Donald Trump. In an “October surprise,” a couple of weeks before the election, the FBI seized Weiner’s laptop as part of the investigation into whether he sent illicit text messages to the 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. On the laptop, agents found emails from Abedin to Clinton containing potentially classified material, prompting then-FBI director James Comey to reopen its investigation into Clinton’s emails and whether she used a private server for official communications. Even though Comey cleared Clinton the day before the election, the damage may have been done.

“Abedin’s two worlds – her Clinton world and her tattered marriage – had collided in the most spectacular fashion,” The Guardian reported in a 2021 profile of Abedin, as she was promoting her new memoir, “Both/And.” Abedin herself wrote in the book: “This man Weiner was going to ruin me.”

In The Guardian profile, Abedin acknowledged that Comey’s decision to reopen the Clinton email investigation — prompted by her husband’s unsavory behavior — could have been a factor in Clinton’s loss. Abedin also told The Guardian that she later learned that Weiner wasn’t just sexting other women during their marriage, but that he was bringing them to their New York apartment and having sex with them there.

Because of her strict Muslim upbringing, Abedin said that Weiner was the first man she seriously dated or had sex with, according to The Guaridan.