TODAY’S TALKER

Happy 74th wedding anniversary to Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are celebrating their 74th wedding anniversary. The couple was married on Tuesday in 1946 in Plains when he was 21 and she was 18.

Throughout their marriage, the Carters have journeyed from Plains to Georgia’s Governor’s Mansion to the White House.

The former president is now 95 years old andthe oldestliving president in U.S. history. In March 2019, Carter passed the record previously held by former president George H.W. Bush, who was 94 years, 171 days old when he died in 2018.

The Carters also have the longest marriage of any presidential couple. Their longstanding romance started at a young age. When growing up in Plains, Rosalynn was a frequent playmate of Jimmy’s younger sister.

In 1945, Jimmy asked Rosalynn to go to the movies with him while he was home on leave from the U.S. Naval Academy. When his mother asked him what he thought of Rosalynn the next day, he is said to have responded, “She’s the one I’m going to marry.”

In his 2015 book,“A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety,” Carter wrote of his first date with his future wife: “She was remarkably beautiful, almost painfully shy, obviously intelligent, and yet unrestrained in our discussion on the rumble seat of the Ford Coupe.”

On Carter’s 75th birthday,when asked the most important thing the former president had done with his life, without hesitation he said, “Marrying Rosalynn,” according to the Carter Center.