The former presidential candidate John Edwards is engaged to be married to his long-time mistress. The paper claims Edwards proposed to Rielle Hunter even as his own children mourned the death last month of their mother, reports CBS News correspondent Betty Nguyen. An Edwards family source tells CBS News that the Enquirer story is inaccurate, and that Edwards has not proposed to Hunter.
It was the Enquirer that initially exposed the affair between Edwards and Hunter. Edwards had an affair with Hunter, and the two had a baby girl, Quinn, while Elizabeth was battling breast cancer. Edwards initially denied the affair, but after it was made public he expressed regrets, telling ABC News he had, “made a mistake.”
Last January, the Edwards separated. As elizabeth was dying, her focus remained on preparing her kids for life without a mother.
“The most important thing you can give your children are wings, because you’re not going to always be able to bring food to the nest, sometimes they’re going to have to be able to fly by themselves,” she wrote.
According to the tabloid, John Edwards introduced his three children, with Elizabeth, to Reille and Quinn at a North Carolina restaurant late last month. The paper quotes an unnamed source: “John pledged his undying love, and promised her that one day they would all ‘become one big, happy family.’ Clearly, he was saying, ‘I want you to marry me,’ but nothing is official yet.”