‘We were driving around town, looking for a way to kill time,’ Jimmy Carter recalled, adding that at one point they stopped and he pointed towards the Methodist church across the street.
‘Rosie was standing in front of the church, right there, and I asked her if she wanted to go out with me,’ Carter said, and she continued by saying she was there for a youth meeting. She herself has never hidden that she really liked the three-year-older boy, and their acquaintance has lasted literally since her birth when Jimmy was three years old. Her family lived next door to the Carters, and Jimmy’s mother, a nurse by profession, helped her mother around the newborn.
As a teenager, he was obsessed with the Navy and the Academy, and she and his sister forged plans on how to get them together. So it’s no surprise that that night when she was 17, she jumped into the car with Jimmy without much thought, and then they went to the movies.
‘The moon was full and illuminating the city, we talked about everything, and I was in seventh heaven. He escorted me home and kissed me,' the former first lady wrote in her memoirs, and as Carter later recounted, the next morning he revealed to his mother that he had been to the cinema with Rosalynn. When asked what he thought of that girl, Jimmy told her briefly, 'I'm going to marry her!'
And years later he always said that he knew that Rosalynn was the right one and that he would marry her. But she herself was not so determined. A few weeks later, in August 1945, she escorted him to the train station, which took him to the academy, and then they began exchanging long letters. When he returned for Christmas, he proposed to her, but she refused.
‘Everything was going too fast and I was too young and too naive to marry,’ she wrote in her memoir, but just a few weeks later everything changed. His parents took her to Annapolis to see him and Jimmy proposed to her again and she then agreed.
'As soon as I returned home, he sent me a copy of the guide for the sailors' wives, which I studied down to the smallest detail.' In July 1946, just a month after his graduation, they were married in the same Methodist church in front of which he saw her. She was 18 and he was 21.
Jimmy's most trusted advisor - Rosie
Married life began at a naval base in Norfolk, and she raised the children herself while Carter was on warships and then in submarines. During those years, their three sons were born - Jack, James III, also known as Chip, and Donnel, or Jeff. The youngest of the children and the only daughter Amy was born 15 years later.
Going to his native Plains in 1953 to be with his dying father reminded him how much he loved his town and life in it, which is why he decided to leave the Navy and return home with his family - all without talking to Rosalynn.
They moved into a subsidized apartment, the only thing they could afford, and he took over his father’s peanut business. It was then that he realized he couldn’t do everything alone — run the office and tour the farms — and decided that Rosalynn would work in the office. After completing the accounting course, she knew a lot more than her husband, but it still took a long time for him to accept that fact.
So in 1962, when he decided to run for the Senate on his 38th birthday, he refused to share it with his wife. ‘One morning I just started wearing a suit instead of jeans. Rosie went into the bedroom and asked me who had died,' he recalled, then added that four years later, for his first candidacy for governor of Georgia, everything had finally fallen into place. It was at the moment he was talking on the phone, and Rosalynn was passing by. He called her and told her to pack his suitcases for the campaign he was going to participate in, and she told him to pack himself.
Shock and disbelief were replaced by thinking about his behavior and after he thought about everything, the two became equal. And in 1970, when he was elected governor, it was Rosalynn who was his key adviser on all political issues. ‘Dad started to change when he ran for governor, aware that mom is a much better politician than him. She took care of everything and worked on his campaigns while he only took care of the Panama Canal ', their son Chip revealed.
As they only later admitted, during the years in which he was president they rarely agreed in opinion, but the public did not find out at the time. They discussed everything at a private lunch held every Thursday at the Oval Office, and they also talked every day on Truman’s White House balcony.
It was then that he began to speak publicly that she was the only adviser he trusted, so Rosalynn soon became a regular at his cabinet meetings. ‘People underestimated her, but she was his eyes and ears in public, and we all turned to her if we needed Jimmy for something,’ said Gerald Rafshoon, a communications expert who worked for Carter at the White House.
After Carter lost to Ronald Reagan in a new election, the Carters returned to their house in Plains, which they built-in 1961. Since they were both in their fifties at the time and capable of change, they decided to focus on their foundation, which raised millions of dollars, and worked to ensure that the poor had health care, as well as to make women equal. Thanks to his work, in 2002 Carter was awarded the Nobel Prize for many years of work in peace and human rights.
Although the years have caught up with them and their health has not been in their favor for a long time, even today, after 75 years of marriage, they stick to a proven recipe - they never go to sleep while quarreling.
‘We both realized a long time ago that we have to share everything. I gave her enough space to do whatever she wants, and I do what I want, but in addition to all that, we found things we can do together,' said Jimmy Carter and revealed that, for example, he played tennis regularly, which is why Rosalynn took private lessons so they could play together. Together in the 60s they learned to ski, fish, and go on trips where they saw as many as 1,300 species of birds. Even when they were separated due to obligations to the Carter Center, they read Bible verses over the phone every night before bed, often in Spanish. It is thanks to their love and connection that they managed to overcome all temptations and enjoy even after 75 years of marriage every day as if it were their first.
By: Amber V. - Gossip Whispers
