8 Great Presidential Love Stories

Cover image of President Calvin Coolidge and Mrs. Coolidge at a garden party in 1926. Photo courtesy of here.

Of the men who have occupied the Presidency, all but one were married (the solitary bachelor was James Buchanan, who is almost universally regarded as the worst President we’ve ever had. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether the two facts are related). These marriages were each unique, and some of them rather fascinatingly romantic. Below I present a small sampling, as examples of the myriad different forms marriage can take.

George and Martha Washington

Martha Dandridge Custis was a young, handsome widow with two children, a wealthy estate, and no need to marry a second time when she met the handsome young George Washington, then a veteran of the French and Indian War. It was not a love match; Martha was past her first youth and George was infatuated with a young woman named Sally Fairfax, who had married a friend of his. Yet the two admired each other for their fine intellects and unimpeachable characters.

Theirs was a quieter, less passionate, but deeper love than often attaches to newlywed couples; they respected each other and formed an affectionate, rational partnership that supported them through the storms of the Revolution and the turbulent years of their infant nation.

John and Abigail Adams

John Adams was famous for being one of the most abrasive, unlikable, and socially awkward men among the founding fathers. Somehow, he managed to win the passionate devotion of probably the most striking wife among them. Abigail Smith Adams was as intellectually brilliant as her husband (a fact he was well aware of, as she served as his closest advisor throughout his career), as well as being a lovely woman of great courage and iron convictions.

Theirs was a glorious partnership, as well as a great love match. Residents of the same small Massachusetts community, and distantly related, John and Abigail had known each other since they were three years old. However, when they encountered each other at a social assembly at the age of seventeen, Abigail suddenly wasn’t just the friend and neighbor she had been anymore to John.

Thus began a romance that has all but passed into the realms of American folklore. Though John’s duties often called him away from home, sometimes for years at a time, the two kept up a continuous correspondence that demonstrated both their passionate love for one another and their intellectual compatibility. Whether as ambassador, diplomat, Vice President, or President, John Adams always turned to his beloved Abigail for advice and support.

Andrew and Rachel Jackson

Andrew Jackson was a man who never did anything by halves. He could be extraordinarily cruel or extraordinarily kind, and everything he did, he did to the extreme. That includes the love he bore his wife. Rachel Robards was married to an abusive husband when Jackson met her, causing him to rebuke the man “Had I such a wife, I would not willingly bring a tear to her lovely eye!”

Rachel eventually left the man and married Jackson, only to discover some years later that he had never actually divorced her. They quickly remedied the situation, but it proved a stumbling block to his career and cost him his first bid for President.

Andrew Jackson adored his wife, who was a devoutly religious woman and helped draw him deeper into the faith. She was the one great mollifying and softening influence in his life, and it’s probably fair to say that much of the good that was in Andrew Jackson came from his wife. Alas, she died on the eve of his inauguration and so was unable to use her calming influence on Jackson during his Presidency.

Ulysses and Julia Grant

It has been said of Grant that he failed at everything except love and war. This isn’t quite fair, as he was a very popular President in his day, but it does emphasize the fact that, despite his often-difficult life, Grant was blessed with a wonderful marriage.

Julia Dent was the sister of Grant’s West Point roommate, and they met when Grant came to pay a post-graduation visit. They shared a love of horses and books, and Grant was quickly smitten. He wrote to her all through his service in the Mexican War and then married her upon his return (despite the fact that her family were Southern slave holders, while Grant came from a family of Ohio abolitionists).

Throughout Grant’s struggles with various failed business ventures, Julia stayed by him and never ceased to believe in her husband’s abilities. So unsettled was their life that, when Grant became President, the eight years they spent in the White House was their longest residency in any one home. The coming of the Civil War, though a tragedy for the nation, was, in a way, a delight to Julia, who finally saw her beloved Ulys vindicated before the whole world.

William and Ida McKinley

Not all successful marriages are happy. William and Ida McKinley’s marriage was a slow-motion tragedy, despite the fervent love and devotion they shared. Their two daughters, Katherine and Ida, both died before the age of five, plunging Ida into deep depression and shattering her already-fragile health. She became an invalid, and William spent the rest of his life caring for her, even as his political career took off.

Much as she relied on his presence, Ida, for her part, still insisted that William continue his career, which culminated in his two-time election as President. The final blow came with his assassination by Leon Czlgosz. As he fell back into the arms of his aids, McKinley begged his secretary to be careful in how he broke the news to Ida. The sad woman outlived her husband by six years before finally being buried beside him.

Theodore and Edith Roosevelt

As with much of the busy life of Theodore Roosevelt, the story of his marriage seems to come right out of a novel (indeed, it bears an uncanny resemblance to the events of David Copperfield).

When young Theodore was growing up, one of his few childhood friends from outside his family circle was a girl named Edith Carrow. They shared a love of books, of the outdoors, and of sports, and seemed made for each other.

Then, in college, Theodore’s father died suddenly, sending the young man into an emotional spiral, from which he emerged married to a beautiful, but unintellectual woman named Alice Hathaway Lee. The marriage lasted only a few years before Alice died of Bright’s disease just after giving birth to their first daughter. Theodore’s mother died the very same day. He marked the event in his diary with a black X and the words “The light has gone out of my life.”

Crushed by this double tragedy, Theodore retreated to his ranch in South Dakota, which occupied his focus for the next few years, until a devastating winter wiped out his herds. Returning to New York, he went to visit his sister, only to find Edith coming down the stairs. What they said in that meeting is not known, but what is known is that it led to another. And another.

Very quietly, the two renewed their relationship. So quietly, in fact, that Theodore’s siblings only learned of their engagement when it was somehow leaked to the newspapers. The two married at last just after Theodore lost his bid for mayor of New York, and Roosevelt added a loving and fruitful marriage to his other numerous accomplishments.

Calvin and Grace Coolidge

Opposites attract was perhaps never more true, at least as far as the White House is concerned, than with Calvin and Grace Coolidge. Calvin—nicknamed ‘Silent Cal’—was a legendarily taciturn, reserved man, more at home with books and figures than in society. Grace Goodhue, lively and beautiful, was a social butterfly who loved mixing with company and who worked at a school for the deaf. All her friends were amazed when she selected the sour-faced, tight-lipped Calvin as her husband, but theirs proved to be a great love match.

Though reserved in most matters, Calvin was never shy about expressing his love for his wife, while she saw in him the talent and conviction that most people missed. Their marriage, though tried by the stress of the Presidency (one of the reasons Calvin didn’t seek a third term, which he could easily have won, was that he saw the job was putting a strain on his marriage) and marred by the death of their adult son, nevertheless remained strong and blossomed again in his tragically short retirement.

Harry and Bess Truman

Elizabeth “Bess” Wallace was the love of Harry’s life. They met in grade school, when Bess was a rough-and-tumble tomboy and Harry was a shy, bespectacled boy. They grew up together, and though Harry had to propose to her twice (at that point in his life he was going nowhere fast), they were undoubtedly one of the happiest and most normal marriages to ever inhabit the White House, though Bess Truman, a down-to-Earth country girl, had little love for Washington and spent most of her husband’s two terms at their home in Missouri, from which they exchanged reams of affectionate letters and phone calls.

After Truman left office, the two of them bought a car and went on a long road trip, staying in motels and eating at diners like any other American family. They were just glad to be back to normal life again and able to spend their retirement years together.

Happy as the marriage was, however Bess’s mother never did think Harry Truman quite good enough for her daughter, even after he became President.