AP is a wire service, not a lifestyle magazine. That single fact reshapes every pitch: your story has to travel to 50 states and 100+ client newsrooms, or it doesn't run.

This guide covers how to reach Associated Press Love reporters, what they actually commission, and the fastest route from inbox to byline.

AP has no standalone "Love" desk. Love coverage surfaces through features, health & science, business, and national reporting — usually pegged to a news hook or a calendar moment.

What lands: relationship research with peer-reviewed backing, Census and Pew data on marriage, divorce, and household formation, the wedding and dating-app economy, loneliness as public health, and caregiving. What doesn't: brand anniversaries, product-led romance gifting, and anything that reads like an advertorial.

The test is portability. A pitch must be re-reportable by a member outlet in another market with a local couple, local numbers, and local color.

Our directory lists four representative bylines — Mae Anderson, Marcia Dunn, Danica Kirka, and Noreen Nasir — as Associated Press Love reporters. Treat that as a starting map, not a static roster.

AP staff are largely general-assignment and rotate across desks. Before you pitch any name on an Associated Press Love reporters list, verify their last 30 days of bylines on apnews.com and X.

Build your own working list of Associated Press Love journalists contacts from three sources: recent Valentine's and holiday-cycle bylines, AP's "Life" and "Health" section feeds, and reporters who cite relationship research in adjacent stories.

Associated Press Love journalists prioritize verifiable numbers over sentiment. Lead with the finding, then hand over the human.

Strong hooks include the economics of dating apps and wedding spending, "gray divorce" and midlife relationship trends, AI companionship and its mental-health implications, long-distance and remote-work couples, and marriage-rate shifts by region.

Pair every data point with a person. A statistic about declining marriage rates is a paragraph; the same statistic attached to a 34-year-old in Ohio who has budgeted for a wedding is a story.

Avoid superlatives you can't source. AP fact-checks aggressively and will spike a pitch that overstates a study — say "a survey of 1,200 adults" rather than "everyone is doing this."

Practical framing for your subject line: [Data point] + [place] + [available now]. Example: "Wedding costs up 22% — couple in Columbus, photos cleared."

Email the reporter directly, during their working hours, with the pitch in the body — no attachments, no press-release PDFs. Link to source data and visuals in a shared folder.

When you access Associated Press Love journalists contacts, respect the wire's rhythm. AP plans holiday and Valentine's packages weeks ahead; a mid-January pitch for a February 14 story is late, not early.

Keep embargoes clean and explicit at the top of the email. AP honors them, but only if the terms are unambiguous and the material is genuinely exclusive-ready.

If you have a time-sensitive study or breaking trend, route it through the appropriate desk email rather than guessing a reporter's mobile. And if a reporter declines, ask what month would work — AP recycles strong ideas seasonally.

• Verify the reporter's recent bylines; confirm they still cover the area
• Lead line contains the number, the place, or the news peg
• One named real person or couple offered, with location and contact
• Third-party data linked and publicly accessible
• Photo/video access confirmed, rights and credit line stated
• Embargo terms at the top, if any
• Pitch body under 200 words, no attachments
• One follow-up scheduled for day 3–5
• Backup angle ready for the next calendar peg

Pitch the story AP can hand to 200 editors unchanged. That's the whole game.