The last we heard from Rosie O’Donnell, her 18 year-old daughter, Chelsea, had run away to stay with a heroin dealer she met on Tinder. After Chelsea was located, she left home to live with her sketchy biological mom. It was scary and sad for Rosie, who reportedly cut off Chelsea’s access to money and was refusing to hand over her birth certificate or social security card.

Well things may not be entirely bleak for Rosie as she’s said to be in a new relationship – with Tatum O’Neal. That’s a surprise. Rosie has been split from her last wife, Michelle Rounds, since at least February. Tatum announced in May that she dates women and elaborated that she found women to be “gentle, and also more intelligent than the men that I’ve met recently.” She added that she didn’t “have a steady right now, but I look forward to it.” She didn’t call herself gay, straight or bi, though, just saying that “I’m not one or the other.” The Daily Mail has this news about Tatum and Rosie dating. (I know!)

The unlikely couple have been quietly dating for weeks, sources exclusively tell Daily Mail Online, and they are very much in love.

The pair – Rosie lives in the sleepy upscale Hudson River village of Nyack, New York, while Tatum splits her time between New York and California – have been keeping their blossoming relationship quiet.

Rosie O and Tatum O went together to see the new Broadway musical Hamilton in early August and a couple of days later shared a meal and a bottle of wine at Da Silvano restaurant in New York.

Page Six reported a fellow diner as saying ‘Rosie looked great, happy and relaxed.’

A source close to O’Neal – who was the youngest person ever to win a competitive Oscar when she nabbed the Best Supporting Actress award for Paper Moon in 1974 when she was just 10 – says she and Rosie have been together for nearly two months.

‘Tatum has spent some time at Rosie’s compound over the past month,’ said the source. ‘She went back to LA but will fly east again in the next few days.’

Tatum, who has three grown children from her eight-year marriage to tennis champ John McEnroe, announced she was now ‘dating mostly women’ in an interview with People magazine in May. ‘Women are the most amazing creatures on earth,’ she said.

O’Neal, who has fought a life-long battle with heroin said she experimented with women in the past, but it is only now she is drug-free that she has gone further.

‘Now I’m clean and aware and alive and interested in the world, saying: “Dating women is exciting to me, and this is turning me on.”

‘I dated in the heterosexual world up until about four years ago, when I started thinking about dating women – just thinking about it.’

She said she was in her hair salon and saw a couple of pretty assistants. ‘I said: “I want to go on a date with her!”

‘I finally decided to pursue it last year,’ added O’Neal. ‘I went to a Super Bowl party…and I saw this hot beautiful woman in her mid-30s serving drinks. She was kind of tough and sassy. I got her number and I think she called me, or I called her – I can’t remember – and we went on a date.’

She said they dated for a couple of months but her friend wanted to get more serious. ‘But it was too soon for me,’ wrote Tatum.

‘Then there was this actress I flirted with for a little bit, but I think she was with somebody else at the time.

‘More recently I met this adorable girl through another acquaintance, and she and I were talking, FaceTiming and stuff, but she’s a little young for me. I’m not going to date so many 30-year-olds because there’s not enough life experience.

‘I’m not just interested in sex, you know. There needs to be a little bit more to the relationship.

‘But it’s a whole new world for me,’ she added. ‘It’s exhilarating.’

Rosie’s representative, Cindi Berger, denied the two women are dating, saying: ‘They’ve been friends for several years since they met in Chicago when Rosie did a show for Own and Tatum did a docu series for OWN.’ – the Oprah Winfrey Network.

[From The Daily Mail]

There are many more quotes in the DM from O’Neal’s extensive Harper’s Bazaar interview. She sounds so happy to finally be dating women. I predict that this will crash and burn like most of Rosie’s relationships, especially because I assume that Rosie still drinks a lot (her ex said as much in their custody battle), and O’Neal is reportedly sober. It’s possible they’re just friends as Rosie’s rep claims, but the Mail points out that they do retweet each other and chat publicly online. It may be on for them, but again it’s Rosie and O’Neal just started dating women. So we’ll see.