Rob Jetten and Nicholas Keenan, the love story of the prime minister and the hockey player that has captivated a country

Rob Jetten, 38, is the new social liberal prime minister of the Netherlands and the first openly gay person to hold the office in the country. He has been open about his sexual orientation since the beginning of his career. Since 2024, he has been engaged to Nicolás Keenan, a 28-year-old Argentine field hockey player whom he met four years ago in a supermarket in The Hague. It was a chance encounter, but Jetten explained that “there was eye contact.”

Shortly afterward, Keenan contacted him through Instagram, and a relationship developed. The young man has been part of the Klein Zwitserland first division club in the same city since 2017, and he knew who the politician was who shopped in his neighborhood. He had seen him in humorous videos on TikTok, where Jetten was presented as the ideal partner for Jesse Klaver, the current leader of the Dutch social democratic party GroenLinks–PvdA. Klaver is married with children.

Dedicated to politics since 2008, Jetten entered the Dutch Parliament as a lawmaker for his party Democrats 66 in 2017. Three years later, he stirred consciences with videos in which he read the homophobic comments he received on social media — today he has almost 380,000 followers on Instagram. His relationship with Keenan began later, but his apprehension about these kinds of attacks underlay the athlete’s initial reluctance to publicly acknowledge their romantic relationship.

Keenan has played hockey since childhood, a sport that unites his entire family. His father, Patricio, coached the Egara club in Terrassa (Barcelona, Spain), where his son moved as a young boy. On his mother’s side, whose surname is Capurro, his uncle Santiago participated in the 1996 and 2000 Olympic Games and coached the Argentine women’s national team, Las Leonas. He played for Egara until he was 18 and then played with the Argentine youth national team in the 2016 World Championship for that age group. At 22, he made his debut with the senior national team and participated in the 2021 Tokyo Olympic Games and the 2024 Paris Games.

The player is the first to publicly acknowledge his sexual orientation in the Dutch first division of hockey, but at the beginning of his relationship with Jetten, he avoided making their relationship public. He wasn’t sure it would be well-received in an elite sports environment, where discipline and self-confidence are paramount.

In an interview with the newspaper Trouw in April 2024, he admitted that he had “been struggling for a long time,” and that hockey was his “escape route.” From hiding himself, he became proud of his sexuality, and in the same interview, he noted, “I don’t want to sound cheesy, but I’d never felt the connection I have with Rob. That gave me the confidence that this is the right path; that I no longer have to hide who I am.”

Many people have drawn comparisons between this story and the plot of Heated Rivalry, the popular series in which two ice hockey players conceal their relationship because they believe they won’t be accepted in their environment. Or with the romance in the series Red, White and Royal Blue (2023), in which the son of the U.S. President falls in love with a British prince.

For the new prime minister, his relationship has also been a journey of self-discovery. “I didn’t even know it was possible to be so in love,” he admitted to the fashion and celebrity magazine Beau Monde. “We keep a watchful eye on each other, and he helps me put things into perspective,” he said, describing their relationship.

He also revealed some details about the proposal. When they announced their engagement on Instagram, alongside three photos of themselves, they wrote that they would soon be “Mr. And Mr.” According to Jetten, he had always said he wouldn’t get married, and while “everyone I knew was surprised, it was me who was proposing” to Nicolas.

On a television program, he gave more details about their wedding plans. He said it would be “in Spain,” and then joked about the different cultural traditions: “I proposed to an Argentinian, and then you call your mother-in-law to give her the news. From that moment on, you’re no longer in control of your own wedding.”

Before their relationship became public, Keenan’s housemates noticed he was starting to go out at night frequently. He would come home very late and offered no explanations, only evasive ones. Then one day, a year after his first meeting with Jetten, he introduced him to his friends. After breaking their silence, the couple often appears happy and confident on Instagram and other social media. And every weekend — at least until now — when his partner plays for Klein Zwitserland, he’s there cheering Nicolas on from the stands. Rain or shine.

“We both live under considerable pressure and we help and motivate each other,” acknowledged Keenan, who received important advice from Queen Máxima of the Netherlands. Also born in Argentina, the wife of Willem-Alexander told him that “he has to speak Dutch well, because as soon as they see you’re a foreigner, the Dutch switch to English.” Jetten has the same mission with Spanish. “Nicolás is always correcting me when I speak it,” he admitted this Monday, during the reception following his inauguration as prime minister.

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