Anderson Cooper’s cuties! The CNN anchor and ex-boyfriend Benjamin Maisani are proud parents to their two sons.
Cooper announced during a May 2020 CNN Town Hall broadcast that he had secretly welcomed his first child via surrogate.
“I want to share with you some joyful news. On Monday, I became a father. This is Wyatt Cooper,” the New York native later wrote via Instagram, sharing the first photo of Wyatt. “He is named after my father, who died when I was 10. I hope I can be as good a dad as he was.”
The Vanderbilt: Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty author — who is the son of Gloria Vanderbilt and Wyatt Emory — revealed that Wyatt’s middle name is Morgan, which is also a family name. “I know my mom and dad liked the name Morgan because I recently found a list they made 52 years ago when they were trying to think of names for me,” Cooper concluded his Instagram announcement. “He is sweet, and soft, and healthy and I am beyond happy.”
After Wyatt’s arrival, the TV journalist asked Maisani — whom he dated between 2009 and 2018 — to coparent his son.
“I don’t really have a family, so my friends have become my family,” he explained during a May 2020 appearance on The Howard Stern Show. “This is somebody I was involved with for 10 years. He’s a great guy. I think it’s good to have two parents if you can. … When I was a little kid, it was just my mom and my brother. My mom, she was not the most parental person, and I wish some adult after my dad died had stepped in and just been like, ‘You know what, I’ll take you to a ball game,’ or, ‘Let’s go out to lunch every now and then, and let’s just talk.’ No one ever did that.”
As Cooper and Maisani continued doting on Wyatt, they eventually expanded their brood in February 2022, welcoming son Sebastian.
“He is healthy and happy and even his occasional hiccups are, to me, adorable,” the 60 Minutes correspondent said during an episode of his show Anderson Cooper 360 that February. “He mostly just sleeps and eats, and he certainly poops, but he already seems like a wise and thoughtful little chap.”
The Yale University alum revealed at the time that the nightclub entrepreneur was also in the process of legally adopting Wyatt. “We are coparents. Wyatt calls me Daddy, and Benjamin is Papa,” Cooper explained during the CNN broadcast. “Wyatt helped us put together Sebastian’s crib and calls his little brother by his middle name, Luke. Sebastian is a mouthful for a 22-month-old.”
The duo’s sons have also become close friends with the children of the political commentator’s pal Andy Cohen. (The Watch What Happens Live host is father to son Ben, born in 2019, and daughter Lucy, born in 2022.) While Cohen and Cooper — who cohost CNN’s annual New Year’s Eve special — enjoy taking their kids to playdates, they have very different fashion tastes for their little ones.
“A lot of the clothes that Andy gets [for Ben have] a lot of razzmatazz in them,” Cooper joked during an April 2021 appearance on Live With Kelly and Ryan, noting Ben’s outfits are frequently passed down to Wyatt. “It’s a lot of tie-dye Grateful Dead stuff, which I don’t know if that’s Wyatt’s vibe at this point. … I see him more as a little Amish child. I would like to dress him just simply and just in simple [clothing].”
Kelly Ripa chimed in at the time: “Andy and his son — they dress alike. I believe that Wyatt, like his father, is a Ralph Lauren model, a baby Ralph Lauren model.”
Scroll below to see Cooper and Maisani’s sweetest family photos:
