Cheryl Hines beams for her birthday celebrations after husband RFK Jr's sex scandal with younger journalist Olivia Nuzzi

Cheryl Hines was seen beaming during her birthday celebration following news of her husband RFK Jr's sex scandal with young journalist Olivia Nuzzi. 

Hines, 59, shared precious moments from the occasion on her Instagram story Saturday night as she posed for a picture with her daughter Catherine Young, 20, and step-daughter Kyra LeMoyne Kennedy, 29. 

The joyous moment came just days after news broke of her husband's alleged affair with Nuzzi, 31, a New York Magazine Reporter. 

The actress, dressed in a white lace turtleneck top and black pants, captioned the photo of her with Catherine and Kyra: 'Me & my girls,' but her husband was nowhere in sight. 

In another snap posted to Catherine's profile, Hines was seen grinning ear to ear as she held her hands to her face while blowing out her birthday candles.

On Friday evening the Curb Your Enthusiasm star beamed as she stepped out in Milan, Italy without her wedding ring following a Gucci-hosted afterparty during Fashion Week. 

Despite the spotlight on her marriage, Hines seemed in good spirits as she waved to fans, wearing a stylish leather jacket, white shirt and blue suit pants. 

The bombshell photographs showed that she had ditched her large diamond wedding ring that she had been pictured wearing less than a week ago at the Emmy Awards on Sunday.

As she greeted fans in Italy, Hines was swinging a set of keys from her finger, and in a blink-and-you-miss-it-moment, a smaller band could be seen on the third finger of her left hand.

It is unclear if this was a keyring or a smaller, more subtle ring than the one she flaunted in her last public sighting on Sunday.

Amid the fallout of the scandal, Hines has remained silent about the state of her decade-long marriage to Kennedy, 70. 

After word spread of the politician's alleged affair with Nuzzi that started when she visited his $7million California home to write a feature article, the journalist was placed on leave. 

Nuzzi, a Washington correspondent, admitted that 'the nature of some communication between myself and a former reporting subject turned personal,' in a statement to DailyMail.com.

She also claimed the relationship was never physical. 

Her editors confirmed that the other party was a 'former subject relevant to the 2024 campaign.' Status reported that the affair was with the former presidential hopeful, who is married to Hines.

RFK Jr. has insisted he only met the political journalist once when she did a profile on him last year.

'Mr. Kennedy only met Olivia Nuzzi once in his life for an interview she requested, which yielded a hit piece,' his spokesman told CNN. A source added that the nature of the relationship was 'emotional and digital in nature, not physical.'

But insiders told the New York Post the pair had engaged in 'sexting' despite RFK Jr. being married and Nuzzi being engaged at the time.

'Earlier this year, the nature of some communication between myself and a former reporting subject turned personal,' Nuzzi said.

'During that time, I did not directly report on the subject nor use them as a source.

'The relationship was never physical but should have been disclosed to prevent the appearance of a conflict. I deeply regret not doing so immediately and apologize to those I've disappointed, especially my colleagues at New York,' she said. 

New York magazine acknowledged an inappropriate relationship in a statement about Nuzzi's hiatus, deeming it 'a violation of the magazine's standards around conflicts of interest and disclosures'.

'Had the magazine been aware of this relationship, she would not have continued to cover the presidential campaign,' the statement read. 'An internal review of her published work has found no inaccuracies nor evidence of bias.

'She is currently on leave from the magazine, and the magazine is conducting a more thorough third-party review. We regret this violation of our readers' trust.'

Nuzzi has been engaged to Politico's chief Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza, 50, since 2022.

However, the couple have since called off their nuptials, with the New York Post reporting this was in the last few weeks.

Lizza, the co-author of Politico Playbook, released a brief statement in the Friday afternoon edition of the newsletter confirming he would no longer be covering the former independent presidential candidate.

The outlet's 50-year-old Chief Washington Correspondent also confirmed he had broken off his engagement to Nuzzi. 

'Because of my connection to this story through my ex-fiancée, my editors and I have agreed that I won't be involved in any coverage of Kennedy in Playbook or elsewhere at POLITICO,' Lizza wrote.

Nuzzi is understood to have met father-of-six RFK for a hiking trip last year as part of a profile that she wrote for New York magazine.

A source close to Nuzzi told Status that the relationship did not begin until the new year, after the profile was published in November 2023.

People close to the matter said she did not proactively disclose the affair and New York magazine only recently learned of it.

Once described by her co-star Larry David as 'the one person in Hollywood who doesn't have a single enemy', the star's marriage to Kennedy has reportedly come at great personal expense over the years. 

Her friends were said to have warned the actress about Kennedy's history as a serial philanderer, while others questioned her silence in the face of her husband's anti-vaccine rhetoric during the pandemic.

It was David who introduced his Curb Your Enthusiasm co-star to Kennedy in 2006 at a ski-weekend fundraiser in Banff, Canada, for Waterkeeper Alliance, an environmental nonprofit co-founded by Kennedy.

Both Hines and Kennedy were married to other people when they met. Hines was married to Paul Young, founder of the management firm Principato-Young, with whom she shares one daughter, Catherine. 

Kennedy was previously married to his second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy. He filed for divorce from Mary in 2010 but she died by suicide in 2012 before proceedings were finalized.

By then, Hines and Kennedy had reconnected. They went public with their relationship in October 2011 and married three years later.