AUGUST 8, 2026
Cristiano Ronaldo with his girlfriend Georgina Rodríguez and his five children in 2022 – EyePress News/Shutterstock
Young men today are often castigated for refusing to settle down and have children in their 20s. And while Premier League footballers are rarely held up as paragons of virtue in the domestic sphere, megastar Cristiano Ronaldo has certainly bucked the trend.
Well, sort of. Rumours are spreading that he is getting married for the first time this weekend to his girlfriend Georgina Rodríguez – and given he is the ripe old age of 41, we can’t applaud him too much for his urge to commit. Although he is certainly going out with a bang: according to reports, the couple intend to marry on Ronaldo’s home island of Madeira, with the ceremony being held at the magnificent Funchal Cathedral followed by a reception at the Savoy Palace, a glitzy five-star hotel on the Atlantic.
He may be marrying late but, unusually for a single man, Ronaldo is also an old hand in the parenting department, having become a solo father to his first son, Cristiano Jr, when he was just 25 years old. He then went on to have two more children on his own – twins, who were born in 2017 via surrogate. The wedding this weekend to Rodríguez is therefore the culmination of one of the sporting world’s most unlikely family set-ups.
Ronaldo’s first son, Cristiano Jr (centre), pictured with siblings Eva Maria and Mateo Ronaldo in 2024 – Pierre Suu/Getty
“Ronaldo’s choices are very unusual for single men in general, but particularly in a footballing context,” agrees one sporting insider. “This is pop psychology, but I’d hazard a guess that because his dad was an alcoholic, something that played an outsized role in his life and which he has talked about quite often in interviews, he felt very passionate about being a good father, and was keen to take up the mantle as early as he possibly could.”
Ronaldo was born in 1985 in Santo António, a relatively poor neighbourhood in Madeira’s capital city of Funchal. He was the youngest of four children and his mother, Dolores Aveiro, worked as a cook and cleaner and largely supported the family. She has remained one of the most important figures in his life and continues to live in Madeira. His father, José Dinis Aveiro, worked as a kit man at a local football club but died from liver failure in 2005, long before he could witness the full extent of his son’s success.
Ronaldo’s father, José, died in 2005 – Ilhapress/Gregorio Cunha
Ronaldo’s talent meant he had an unusual childhood, not least because he left Madeira at just 12 years old to join a football academy in Lisbon. He moved to the Portuguese capital – which is more than 600 miles from Funchal – alone, something that he has said taught him independence and resilience from an unusually young age.
Once he became successful, Ronaldo followed a more conventional path, and when it came to dating, he always had an eye for the sort of woman who is eternally popular in footballing circles. A photo gallery of his early girlfriends could double up as the calling card wall of a modelling agency. They include models Jordana Jardel, Nereida Gallardo and Gemma Atkinson and television presenter Merche Romero.
None of these flings lasted much beyond the eight-month mark, but all that changed when Ronaldo met Russian supermodel Irina Shayk while shooting an Armani commercial. They got together in 2010 and, months later, Cristiano Jr was born to a mystery woman in the US.
Ronaldo dated Russian supermodel Irina Shayk between 2010 and 2015 (pictured in 2011) – Fotonoticias/FilmMagic
At the time, Ronaldo wrote on Facebook: “It is with great joy and emotion that I inform I have recently become father to a baby boy. As agreed with the baby’s mother, who prefers to have her identity kept confidential, my son will be under my exclusive guardianship.”
That was 16 years ago, and the mother’s name has never been released to the public (some people believe she was a surrogate; it has never been confirmed). The closest Ronaldo has come to opening up was when he spoke about his choices to GQ, saying: “Some kids never get to know their parents… Having a father is good enough… I always thought, and still think, that he will understand me.” Later, when asked why he chose to have Cristiano Jr at just 25, he simply replied: “I wanted to be a young father.”
Equally, Guillem Balagué’s comprehensive biography of the footballer draws together the separate threads of his life – the father who died, the devoted mother, the fact he left home so young, and the lifelong desire to build certainty and control – and allows readers to draw their own conclusions about why he chose this unusual path.
Either way, Ronaldo took to single parenthood, and soon after his long-term relationship with Shayk ended in 2015, he openly hired a surrogate who gave birth to twins Eva and Mateo in 2017.
Ronaldo became the father of twins Eva and Mateo (born via surrogate) in 2017 – @Cristiano/X
While the surrogate was pregnant, Ronaldo was also on the hunt for a new partner – and found her in the form of Rodríguez, who he met while shopping at the Gucci shop in Madrid. She was working as a shop assistant for the luxury Italian brand and – in the ultimate fairytale moment for aspiring influencers everywhere – spotted a handsome man in the corner of the boutique, only to realise that it was the world’s most famous footballing hero, and he was staring right back at her.
Happily, Prince Charming returned to the store a few days later, asked her out to dinner and swept her off her feet (and ensured she could no longer be employed in any normal sense, as fans who heard who her boyfriend was quickly besieged the boutique).
“I never imagined I would fall so heavily in love with her,” Ronaldo says, about his memory of that particular period. “But after a while, I felt that she was the one for me.”
Since she started dating Ronaldo, Rodríguez has amassed a significant Instagram following of her own – Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
Born in 1994 in Buenos Aires, Rodríguez grew up in the Spanish city of Jaca and – after studying ballet throughout her teens but realising she was unlikely to become a professional – moved to Madrid, where she worked first for Massimo Dutti, and then for Gucci. At just 22, she met Ronaldo.
The press took their relationship seriously when, mere weeks after the arrival of the twins, the couple announced they were having a baby of their own, a girl who was born in November 2017 and named Alana Martina.
Rodríguez quickly became a star in her own right, amassing Instagram followers (she has 76 million) and brand partnerships. The family also followed Ronaldo’s footballing career around the world, moving from Madrid to Turin and then Manchester. While in Italy in 2022, Rodríguez cemented her status as an ultra-Wag by filming a Netflix documentary about her life, called I am Georgina (for which she is credited as the director of content to give a flavour of how unbiased a piece of journalism it is).
In the show, Rodríguez is seen living the late-capitalist dream, being whisked off on a private jet by Ronaldo to try on dresses at the Jean Paul Gaultier atelier in Paris, popping down to their yacht in Monaco, or simply driving around Turin in the fleet of luxury cars in their garage – Bugatti, Mercedes, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Rolls Royce, McLaren all feature.
She is also filmed parenting all four of Ronaldo’s children, and in the documentary speaks about his offspring as if they were her own. “We’re like any other family. We have breakfast together, Cris goes to training… If I have to take care of the house, I’ll do that… and my children.”
In some of the scenes, Rodríguez was clearly pregnant again and soon after the 12-week scan in 2022, the couple announced they were expecting twins. Tragically, only one of them – a girl named Bella Esmerelda – survived the birth.
Ronaldo and Rodríguez with his son, Cristiano Jr, in 2017 – Alexander Hassenstein/Fifa/Getty
Later, when speaking to Piers Morgan about the death of their infant son, who they named Angel, Ronaldo described it as “probably the worst moment that I passed through in my life, since my father died”. He also said: “We had quite difficult moments because we don’t understand why it happened to us.”
Touchingly, fans rallied around the footballer and in a match between Liverpool and Manchester United – who Ronaldo was playing for at the time – chants of “You’ll never walk alone” were heard from both sides of the stadium. “It was a real sign of respect for him”, says the footballing insider, “and a sign of how beloved he is.”
Currently, the family lives in Riyadh, where Ronaldo plays for Saudi Arabian team Al Nassr, but they spend a significant amount of time at their vast property in Mallorca. Ronaldo, who proposed at home last year in front of the children, had also spoken about wanting to hold his wedding after the 2026 World Cup. While he had never said where, it was always highly likely the couple would choose Madeira, where they own a house.
Certainly, it has been a long time coming. After all, Ronaldo started building his family long before he met the woman he wanted to spend his life with.
Courtesy: Telegraph
