The Nobel Prize Winner With Husband Asser Malik: Malala’s Untold Love Story

CELEBRATED GIRLS’ EDUCATION ADVOCATE MALALA YOUSAFZAI—WHO SURVIVED AN ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT AT 15—OPENS UP ABOUT THE ROMANCE SHE ‘NEVER THOUGHT’ SHE’D HAVE

- JANELLE GRIFFITH,GILLIAN LAUB

Life Partners

"Marriage makes our lives happier, easier, more fun," says Yousafzai (with Malik in New York City on Sept. 19),

As she approached her final year at Oxford University, Malala Yousafzai grew a little sick of hiding her boyfriend. The youngest-ever Nobel Peace Prize winner, known around the world by her first name since surviving an assassination attempt by the Taliban at just 15, had fallen in love with a tall, handsome cricket manager named Asser Malik. But they kept their relationship under wraps—afraid, should a fan or photographer spot them, of spurring controversy in their native Pakistan. Then, in the summer of 2019, Yousafzai decided to confide in her father, Ziauddin, the one person she felt she could tell anything. “I like him, Dad,” she said. If the seriousness of the romance was a surprise to her family, it was a surprise to her and Malik too. “I never thought I would get married,” she tells People. He adds: “You do not go in meeting Malala and think you’ll end up together.”

Now Yousafzai, 28, is nearly four years into marriage to Malik, 35, and they’re opening up about their partnership, both personal and professional. Earlier this year the globetrotting education activist and bestselling author and her husband cofounded Recess Capital, which aims to increase women’s and girls’ access to sports. Yousafzai also just published a new memoir,