On December 29, 2024, the Carter Center announced that Jimmy Carter, the 39th President of the United States, passed away at his longtime home in Plains, Georgia. At 100 years old, he became the longest-living president in American history.
Mr. Carter’s wife, Rosalynn Carter, was a supportive and confident partner throughout his tenure (and beyond). To commemorate the life of the Carter family, who passed away in November 2023 at the age of 96, and the Carter family’s touching love story, Vogue reimagined the story of their courtship and marriage. Read its history below.
“No married couple in our nation’s history has approached the White House as equals as Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter,” Vogue wrote in its January 1977 issue, and in fact, it has been almost 50 years since Vogue magazine wrote in its January 1977 issue. It was the same statement Carter later issued. Since my wife passed away this month. “Rosalyn has been my equal partner in everything I’ve ever accomplished,” he said. “She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalyn existed in this world, I always knew someone would love and support me.”
The Carters’ love story was historically significant–they married in 1946, making them the longest-serving first-married couple in history, second only to George and Barbara Bush’s 73 years–but… It had humble beginnings in their common hometown of the Plains. , Georgia. About 18 years before their first date (in 1945, Mr. Carter appeared in the film the summer before his final year at the Naval Academy), his mother – a nurse known throughout her life as Miss Lillian — actually promised her future. (Biographer Jonathan Alter claims that the first time two-year-old Jimmy met Rosalyn was just a few days after she was born). and the entire community held her in great esteem,” Mrs. Carter wrote of Miss Lillian in her 1984 memoir, “The First Lady from the Plains.” “My parents named my sister Lillian Alesia after her.”
After their wedding at Plains Methodist Church (where Mr. Carter proposed to his soon-to-be bride with a compact engraved with the letters ILYTG, short for “I love you so much”), the Carters lived together. will last a long time. She gave birth to four children at the age of 77. During that time, they survived Mr. Carter’s seven years of active duty in the Navy. They returned to the Plains, where they took over the family’s peanut growing business (and Mrs. Carter learned how to keep books). Served two terms in the state senate. Term as Governor of Georgia. A somewhat eventful term as president from 1977 to 1981. He then spent nearly 40 years conducting diplomatic and philanthropic work through his nonprofit organization, the Carter Foundation.
