Dina Matos | |
---|---|
First Lady of New Jersey | |
In role January 15, 2002 –November 15, 2004 | |
Preceded by | Diane DiFrancesco |
Succeeded by | Mary Jo Codey |
Personal details | |
Born | Cantanhede,Portugal | November 5,1966
Spouse(s) | Paul Zuccarino (m. 2018) |
Children | 1 |
Education | Rutgers University, Newark |
Dina Matos (born November 5, 1966 [1] ) is a former First Lady of New Jersey. She served as first lady during the administration of her husband, Jim McGreevey. In advance of an expected lawsuit, Gov. McGreevey, with Matos at his side, revealed at an August 2004 press conference that he had had an affair with a man and was resigning from office. Matos and McGreevey separated in October 2004. A divorce was granted following a trial on August 8, 2008.
Matos is the daughter of Maria and Ricardo Matos. They moved to the United States from Portugal when she was still young and settled in the heavily Portuguese Ironbound section of Newark. Maria worked in a gift shop and Ricardo worked for the railroad. [2]
After graduating from East Side High School, she enrolled at the Newark campus of Rutgers University in 1984. She majored in political science, but also worked as a secretary while in college. Although she was enrolled until 1991, she never graduated. [2]
Matos is a former manager of Public and Professional Relations at Saint James Hospital, and Executive Director of the Columbus Hospital Foundation in Newark, New Jersey.
Matos met McGreevey in 1996, while he was mayor of Woodbridge Township, New Jersey, and they began dating the following year, shortly after he lost his first bid for governor to Christine Todd Whitman. [2] McGreevey had separated from his first wife, Kari Schutz, in 1995 and was divorced in 1997. [2]
They married October 7, 2000. Together they have a daughter, Jacqueline Matos McGreevey, who was born prematurely in December 2001, after Matos had been hospitalized for six weeks.[ citation needed ]
The Matos and McGreevey divorce and custody battle gained much media attention in New Jersey because McGreevey wanted full custody. Matos wanted $600,000 plus alimony. She was denied alimony. [3]
The trial to end their 3½-year separation started on May 6, 2008. Jim asked the court for equal custody of their 8-year-old daughter. Matos McGreevey demanded $600,000 compensation. McGreevey received joint custody, and paid child support. [4] They were also required to use a parenting coordinator. [5]
Matos speaks fluent Portuguese and has worked to obtain green cards and naturalization for Portuguese immigrants. [2] In June 2004, she was grand marshal of the Portugal Day parade in Newark. [2]
Matos announced in January 2007 that she was writing a book, "Silent Partner", to end media speculation on her life. In the book, Matos wrote that she would never have married McGreevey if she had known he was gay, nor would she have "allowed a gay man to father my child," referring to their six-year-old daughter. [6] On May 1, 2007, the day of the book's release, Matos broke her silence and spoke on The Oprah Winfrey Show promoting her book. [7] [8] On May 2, 2007, she appeared on ABC's Good Morning America with Diane Sawyer and stated:
I thought I had it all, I thought it was the American dream, and it turned out to be a nightmare. ... You know he had the entire day [that he resigned] scripted. His entire life had been choreographed, and even as his world was falling apart, he was still trying to script everything and making sure that day went as he wanted it. [9]
Gayle King interviewed Matos in the June 2007 edition of O, The Oprah Magazine. [10]
The Oprah Winfrey Show, often referred to as The Oprah Show or simply Oprah, is an American daytime syndicated talk show that aired nationally for 25 seasons from September 8, 1986, to May 25, 2011, from Chicago, Illinois. Produced and hosted by Oprah Winfrey, it remains the highest-rated daytime talk show in American television history.
Robin Givens is an American actress.
Alimony, also called aliment (Scotland), maintenance, spousal support and spouse maintenance (Australia), is a legal obligation on a person to provide financial support to their spouse before or after marital separation or divorce. The obligation arises from the divorce law or family law of each country. In most jurisdictions, it is distinct from child support, where, after divorce, one parent is required to contribute to the support of their children by paying money to the child's other parent or guardian.
James Edward McGreevey is an American politician who served as the 52nd governor of New Jersey from 2002 until his resignation in 2004.
Golan Cipel is an Israeli consultant most known for his role in a scandal surrounding American former politician Jim McGreevey.
Emily "Cissy" Houston is an American soul and gospel singer. After a successful career singing backup for such artists as Roy Hamilton, Dionne Warwick, Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, and Chaka Khan, Houston embarked on a solo career, winning two Grammy Awards for her work.
Oprah's Book Club was a book discussion club segment of the American talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, highlighting books chosen by host Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey started the book club in 1996, selecting a new book, usually a novel, for viewers to read and discuss each month. In total, the club recommended 70 books during its 15 years.
Dina Marie Fisher, known professionally as Dina Eastwood, is an American reporter, news anchor, and actress. She is the former wife of actor and film director Clint Eastwood.
Gayle King is an American television personality, author, and broadcast journalist for CBS News, co-hosting its flagship morning program, CBS Mornings, and before that its predecessor CBS This Morning. She is also an editor-at-large for O, The Oprah Magazine.
The Road is a 2006 post-apocalyptic novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy. The book details the grueling journey of a father and his young son over a period of several months across a landscape blasted by an unspecified cataclysm that has destroyed industrial civilization and almost all life. The novel was awarded the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 2006. The book was adapted into a film of the same name in 2009, directed by John Hillcoat.
Amiri Baraka, previously known as LeRoi Jones and Imamu Amear Baraka, was an American writer of poetry, drama, fiction, essays, and music criticism. He was the author of numerous books of poetry and taught at several universities, including the University at Buffalo and Stony Brook University. He received the PEN/Beyond Margins Award in 2008 for Tales of the Out and the Gone. Baraka's plays, poetry, and essays have been described by scholars as constituting defining texts for African-American culture.
Susan Still is an American women's rights activist and keynote speaker on domestic violence. After suffering years of extreme abuse from her husband, blues guitarist Ulner Lee Still, she was awarded custody of her sons, and her husband was jailed for 36 years, the longest sentence ever imposed for non-lethal violence.
East Side High School is a four-year public high school in Newark in Essex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, operating as part of the Newark Public Schools. The school serves the city's Ironbound neighborhood. The school has been accredited by the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Elementary and Secondary Schools since 1929 and is accredited until January 2026.
Divorce in the United States is a legal process in which a judge or other authority dissolves the marriage existing between two persons. Divorce restores the persons to the status of being single and permits them to marry other individuals. In the United States, marriage and divorce fall under the jurisdiction of state governments, not the federal government.
The 2001 New Jersey gubernatorial election was a race for the Governor of New Jersey. It was held on November 6, 2001. Primaries took place on June 25. Democratic nominee Jim McGreevey won the general election with 56% of the vote against Bret Schundler — the first majority-elected governor since James Florio in 1989. Democrats simultaneously ended Republican control of both houses of the legislature after 10 years.
The Poet Laureate of New Jersey was an honor presented biennially by the Governor of New Jersey to a distinguished New Jersey poet. Created in 1999, this position existed for less than four years and was abolished by the legislature effective July 2, 2003. When the New Jersey State Legislature created the laureate position, the bill provided specifically for the creation of an award named in honor of twentieth-century poet and physician William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) who resided in Rutherford, New Jersey. However, the legislature recognized that the award's recipient would "be considered the poet laureate of the State of New Jersey for a period of two years." Before the position was abolished, only two poets, Gerald Stern and Amiri Baraka, had been appointed as the state's poet laureate.
Oprah Winfrey's endorsement of Senator Barack Obama was one of the most widely covered and studied developments of the 2008 presidential campaign, as she has been described as the most influential woman in the world. Winfrey first endorsed Senator Obama in September 2006 before he had even declared himself a candidate. In May 2007 Winfrey made her official endorsement of candidate Obama, and in December 2007, she made her first campaign appearances for him. Two economists estimate that Winfrey's endorsement was worth over a million votes in the Democratic primary race and that without it, Obama would have received fewer votes. Then-Governor of Illinois Rod Blagojevich claimed that the endorsement was so significant in making Obama president-elect that he considered offering Obama's former seat in the Senate to Winfrey.
Oprah Gail Winfrey, also known mononymously as Oprah, is an American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and media proprietor. She is best known for her talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, broadcast from Chicago, which ran in national syndication for 25 years, from 1986 to 2011. Dubbed the "Queen of All Media", she was the richest African-American of the 20th century and was once the world's only black billionaire. By 2007, she was often ranked as the most influential woman in the world.
McGreevey is an Irish surname originating in Clare Ireland. Notable people with the surname include:
Thomas Trace Beatie is an American public speaker, author, and advocate of transgender rights and sexuality issues, with a focus on transgender fertility and reproductive rights.