Sen. Cory Booker’s Wife on His Marathon Speech: I Didn’t Want Him to ‘Die’ or Suffer ‘Injury’

Sen. Cory Booker’s (D-NJ) wife claims she was worried that her spouse would suffer an injury, or at worst, die, during his marathon Senate speech last year.

Booker broke the record for the longest floor speech ever delivered in March 2025 – a speech which began at Monday, March 31, 2025, at 7 p.m. ET and ended the following night, on April 1. He spoke for a 25 hours and 5 minutes, beating former Sen. Strom Thurmond’s record by less than an hour.

Booker’s wife, Alexis Booker, whom he wed last year, posted a video to TikTok this week, walking through the worries she had as Booker delivered his marathon speech. She said she was afraid he would actually “die.”

“It’s not super safe to stand for 25 hours. Like, your body kind of just like breaks down. And if you fall over, you could hit your head. So those are the things that were going through our head,” she said.

“Like, yes, I wanted him to break the record, but I also wanted him to not die or like get injured,” she continued, explaining that she was extremely worried he would get dehydrated or woozy from not eating for a day.

“He wasn’t going to eat for a really long period of time— just being dehydrated alone was worrying me,” she said, explaining that she and Booker’s mother could not be there, so she would call his mother because “everybody was just nervous.”

“At that point, I was living in L.A. and I was preparing to move to live with Cory. And so I didn’t want to bother him, but I would send cute messages or I made a cartoon with my face on it,” she said, noting she made a comic and had Booker’s team print it out and give it to him.

@alexislbooker

Just a little over a year ago, @Cory was standing on the Senate floor for over 25 hours, delivering a marathon, record-breaking speech. With Cory’s book, Stand, now released and with us traveling to discuss the book and engage in conversation with so many people across the country, I’m reflecting on where I was this time last year. A year ago, Cory was still my boyfriend, and I was living in LA, rushing to pack up nine years’ worth of boxes to move across the country to live together. The moment he broke the record, I was in my living room packing, cheering at the top of my lungs while watching him on TV, while also trying not to scare the stranger in my garage who was there to buy things I’d listed for sale online. It was an unbelievable, chaotic, and also very happy moment.

♬ original sound – Alexis L. Booker

Booker largely used his speech to espouse his anti-Trump views, and others noticed. Even NBC News Senior National Politics Reporter Jonathan Allen pointed out that the stunt showed that Democrats “don’t have a forward-looking vision” or answers for concerns on the economy and the crimwave. However, Booker maintained his speech was designed to “lift the voices of Americans who are being harmed by President Trump.”

The Democrat senator later cashed in on his stunt with a new book titled Stand.

“Now is not the time to surrender to cynicism or abandon our most noble ideals,” the Democrat said at the time. “Now is the time to defiantly declare like our ancestors before us: I too stand for America.”