George H. W. Bush and Barbara Bush were married for 73 years, becoming the longest-married couple in presidential history.
HOUSTON — They met at a Christmas dance. She was 16. He was 17.
Three years later they were married. The couple stayed together for 73 years, becoming the longest-married couple in presidential history.
“George Bush knows how I feel,” Barbara Bush had said. “He is the hero… He is my hero.”
George H. W. Bush was at his wife’s side when she died on April 12 at age 92 and had been holding her hand all day. Her death was followed by his own on Friday, about eight months later. He was 94.
The couple’s relationship was a true love story, which granddaughter Jenna Bush Hager has described as “remarkable.”
They had six children, including Hager’s father, former President George W. Bush, making Barbara Bush one of only two first ladies to also be a presidential mother. The other was Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams, the nation’s second president, and mother of John Quincy Adams, the sixth president.
George H. W. Bush had described the mother of their six children as “the mainstay, of course, the parent who was always there to help solve the daily problems and emergencies of teen and preteen life.”
In her 1994 memoir, Barbara Bush described her and her husband as “the two luckiest people in the world, and when all the dust is settled and all the crowds are gone, the things that matter are faith, family and friends. We have been inordinately blessed, and we know that.
