Madonna may have turned 64 last month, but her face and her boyfriends remain stubbornly young. One is the result of modern medicine. The other derives from queenly selection.
Since her 2008 divorce from Guy Ritchie (10 years younger) and a brief fling with Alex Rodriguez (17 years younger), the singer has dated men a minimum of 28 years her junior. Madonna’s latest beau, model Andrew Darnell, is 41 years behind her. At just 23, he falls right between her 25-year-old daughter Lourdes Leon and 21-year-old son Rocco Ritchie.
This is no coincidence, a Madonna friend told The Post: “She likes the idea of a guy being younger than her daughter. It announces her desirability to the world. Some people may see her as a vampire, feeding off of the young, but, in her mind, she is forever youthful and this helps to prove it.”
Leonardo Di Caprio famously dumps women once they turn 25, but even he has nothing on this cougar.
Going all the way back to Jean-Michel Basquiat (two years younger), whom Madonna dated after first moving to New York City from Detroit in the early 1980s, the singer has had a penchant for younger dudes. Her two husbands — Ritchie and Sean Penn (two years younger) — were both her junior as was baby daddy Carlos Leon (eight years younger).
“I didn’t choose … to have a relationship with a younger man. That’s just what happened,” she once told Nightline of then-boyfriend Brahiim Zaibat (28 years younger). “You see, that’s the romantic in me.”
Famously, Warren Beatty — 21 years her senior and her beau from 1989-1990 —stands as the only serious outlier. Apparently, that was enough to put Madonna off older men forever.
Here, then, is the onetime boy toy’s toy boys.
Andrew Darnell
Age gap: 41 years
On Sept. 4, Madonna was photographed canoodling with the 23-year-old IMG model and actor, who played Sylvester on the HBOMax series “Betty.” After taking in the Nigerian musician REMA at Irving Plaza, the two hit Mr. French — and French-kissed between bites of truffle fries. It was not their first lip lock, either. For a Paper magazine cover shoot that debuted last month, the singer touched tongues with Darnell and licked his nipples. After posting outtakes from the shoot to Instagram, she cheekily wrote, “All in good taste.”
Ahlamalik Williams
Age gap: 36 years
Williams, a backup dancer for Madonna’s Madame X tour, first met her in 2015, presumably on the job. They began dating in 2019, when he was 25. She is even older than his father — who had no problem with it: “Love has no age,” Drue Williams wisely said. “My son is living la vida loca.” Things were serious enough that Madonna took the dancer with her family to Italy in celebration of her 63rd birthday last year, kissing on the street and posting vacation pics to Instagram. At the time of their breakup this past April, a friend told The Sun, “With them working on other things, it was hard to keep the romance alive.”
Kevin Sampaio
Age gap: 28 years
The old man of the group, Kevin Sampaio was all of 31 when Madonna, 59 at the time, went public with their relationship in 2017. They had been dating for over a year before being spotted together in Portugal. A source told Radar the initial secrecy was because she “wanted to make sure that she could trust him.” Another on-the-job meet-cute, Madonna and the model hooked up on the set of her “Bitch, I’m Madonna” video, in which he played her love interest. Life imitated art when she took him on a trip to Africa where she adopted twins, Estere and Stella. As the couple’s relationship flourished, an insider explained to Radar the singer’s preference for younger guys: “Men her age just can’t keep up.” Nevertheless, in 2019, Sampaio quietly disappeared from Madonna’s ray of light.
Aboubakar “Brooklin” Soumahoro
Age gap: 33 years
This Ivory Coast-born Soumahoro met Madonna at party in 2015. A mere 24 to her 57, he was modeling but made ends meet by also working at Harrods department store in London. Soon after the couple met, he had ditched the day job and was spotted on her “Rebel Heart” tour. Things got cozy enough that Soumahoro moved from London into Madonna’s NYC place, got close to her kids and even pushed to help parent them. But, as sources told Page Six, that caused domestic friction at a time when Madonna was feuding over custody issues with former husband Ritchie, leading to the boy-toy’s bye-bye in 2017.
Timor Steffens
Age gap: 29 years
Madonna and dancer Steffens first hit the limelight together in January 2014, after meeting at a Swiss chalet owned by the fashion designer Valentino. She was 55; he was a ripe 26. But things got off to a shaky start. Soon after they became an item, Madonna was dancing aboard a yacht in Steffens’ hometown of Rotterdam when she took a spill and wound up on crutches. Maybe that was a harbinger of things to come: The relationship lasted a mere seven months. Madonna, her kids and Steffens were reportedly on a European swing when she decided things had run their course. Son Rocco was celebrating his August 11 birthday when, according to Us, “Madonna politely asked Timor to take his luggage and leave.”
Brahim Zaibat
Age gap: 28 years
In September 2010, then 52-year-old Madonna asked Brahim Zaibat, 24, to dance at a promotional event for her Material Girl clothing line — and he moved his way into her heart. Two months later, she took the devout Muslim, to a Kabbalah gathering; two years later, she said, according to the Daily Mail, he fulfilled her “in many ways.” Officially, the three-year-long relationship fell apart due to “conflicting schedules.” But things were not helped by the fact that Zaibat allegedly had a fling — before he and the singer knew each other — with Madonna’s trainer. The singer blasted to a concert crowd in the Philippines: “Once I had a Filipino trainer — this beautiful girl … But she f–ked my boyfriend, so I fired her.”
Jesus Luz
Age gap: 29 years
In December 2008, Madonna, then 50 years old and fresh off her divorce from Ritchie, was doing a photo shoot in Brazil for W magazine. Also on the set Jesus Luz, just 21, who was cast as her lover and then landed the role off-camera as well. His modeling career blasted off thanks to the association with the singer, and he transformed into a DJ and even embraced her beloved Kabbalah. Unfortunately, Luz’s mother, a hairdresser in Rio De Janeiro who was herself 14 years younger than Madonna, did not embrace the relationship or the age difference. When it ended after 14 months, one of the singer’s friends was quoted as saying, “How it even lasted a year seems a miracle to a lot of people.”
