Sandra Lee and Ben Youcef have broken up and called off their engagement, ending a relationship that began in 2021 and had largely stayed out of the spotlight in its final years. Lee’s rep, Jen Abel, confirmed to TMZ on April 22 that the couple had called off their nuptials.
The split comes after Lee was seen out in New York a week before April 22 without her engagement ring. When asked about the missing ring, she said her outfit simply “didn’t call for jewelry.” The two were last seen together publicly in 2024 at Elton John’s AIDS Foundation Oscars viewing party, and Lee’s last post featuring Youcef came on Valentine’s Day in 2025, when she wrote, “To my Special Valentines, Ben, thank you for nearly 4 years of love” and added, “We have had so much fun, so much romance, so many special moments.”
Lee and Youcef were dating in 2021 and got engaged that same year, so the breakup closes a relationship that lasted nearly five years. Before Youcef, Lee was in a 15-year relationship with former New York governor Andrew Cuomo, who resigned in 2021 following sexual harassment allegations. The timeline also fits comments Lee made years earlier about making room for Cuomo in her life, including a 2010 remark that she had “cleared the decks” and reorganized her company so she would have more time to devote to him, followed by a similar discussion in 2011 after he was elected.
What had been public mostly in flashes now has a clear ending: the engagement is off, and Lee’s own Valentine’s Day tribute shows the breakup came after a stretch when the relationship still appeared intact. The unanswered question is not whether it happened — it did — but how quickly the split moved from private to public once the ring disappeared and the confirmation followed.
