Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has announced that he and long-time partner Cilia Flores were married in a private ceremony presided over by Caracas Mayor Jorge Rodriguez.

 

"I want to report that yesterday, July 15, Cilia and I legalized what already existed according to the laws of the Republic – we got married," said Maduro at an official event broadcast on state television Tuesday.

 

Maduro said that Rodriguez, "the official matchmaker of the revolution", was the person who officiated at his wedding to the "first combatant of the Republic", as he refers to Flores, shying away from the designation "first lady".

 

"We were united … with God, in God and for God and with our family, but we decided, a wise decision, good decision, to make that legal according to our Constitution, our laws," he said.

 

Together since the early 1990s, Maduro and Flores have no children in common,  though each has kids from previous marriages.

 

Flores, who was speaker of the National Assembly and Venezuela's attorney general, met Maduro during the founding of the MBR-200 political movement, one of the first to be organized by the late president Hugo Chavez.

 

In addition, she was part of the team of lawyers who defended then Lt Col Chavez after his failed 1992 coup against President Carlos Andres Perez.