"'If I denied you your dream … I would not be marrying the man I fell in love with.'" The first lady – an advisor in chief "Don't do that," Jill had said, pressing her finger to the phone's receiver.īiden said his wife-to-be later told him why she did it. He recalled listening as the phone rang, then suddenly – a dial tone. Once he made that call, it would be all over, he told her. To show he was serious, he picked up the phone to call the chief political reporter at the local paper, the Wilmington News-Journal. Jill agreed, and because Joe Biden knew she had reservations about being married to a public figure, he offered to not run for a second Senate term the following year. "I'm too much in love with you to just be friends," he recalled telling her. She kept saying she wasn't ready, until in early 1977 he gave her an ultimatum, telling her if she didn't agree, he'd have to walk away. The way he tells it in his memoir, Promises to Keep, Joe Biden had to ask Jill to marry him at least five times. In late 1972, weeks after he was first elected, his first wife Neilia and baby daughter Naomi were killed in a car crash, leaving Joe Biden to care for his two remaining young children, his sons Beau and Hunter. He was 32, but already a senator, a father and a widower. The couple began dating in 1975 after Frank Biden procured Jill's number for his big brother Joe, who'd been wowed by a modelling photo he saw of her. The anecdotes underline the decisive role Jill Biden has played throughout her husband's almost impossibly long political career as senator for Delaware for 36 years, vice-president for two terms, and now President of the United States. "He was ready, we were ready, and we weren't taking 'maybe next time' for an answer." She called a family meeting and told her husband it had been decided, he was to run. Joe Biden couldn't make up his mind either way, so Jill took matters into hand. "With two wars hanging over Americans' heads, there was one thing that was clear to me: Joe needed to run," she said. Four years later, Jill Biden had changed her tune as George W.
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