THE NEVER ENDING LOVE BETWEEN ROSALYNN CARTER, AND FORMER PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER

In their marriage of 77 years, late former First Lady, Rosalynn Carter, and former President, Jimmy Carter, had kept their love until the end.

They knew each other, since they were born. The couple had grew im Plains, Georgia. Rosalynn was the best friend of Jimmy’s sister, and they were teenagers, when their feelings towards each other had started. As Jimmy went into the Naval Academy, he later attended to Georgia Southwestern College and the Georgia Institute of Technology.

After he was graduated from Naval Academy, in 1946, the couple had married.

“I didn’t know a single boy I thought I’d want to spend my life with until Jimmy Carter came calling,” Rosalynn said.

“I was cruising around with my sister, Ruth, and her boyfriend, just looking for a date, and I picked up Rosalynn in front of the Methodist church,” Jimmy said.

“I just felt compatible with her. She was beautiful and innocent, and there was a resonance. We rode in the rumble seat of a Ford pickup – Ruth and her boyfriend in the front – and I kissed her on that first date. I remember that vividly.”

“The moon was full in the sky, conversation came easy, and I was in love,” Rosalynn stated in her memoir.

It was on the second proposal, that Rosalynn had said yes to Jimmy. To Oprah he explained, “From then until late May, she maintained, ‘No,’”

“I kept trying, and finally, she said okay.”

They had four children together, their three sons, Jack, Chip and Jeffrey, and their daughter, Amy Lynn.

“We’ve come to understand each other much better. I was by far the dominant person in the marriage at the beginning, but not anymore,”

“She’s just as strong, if not stronger than I am. She’s fully equal to me in every way in our relationship, in making business decisions, and she makes most of the decisions about family affairs. And I think it was a struggle for her to achieve this degree of independence and equality in our personal relationship. So, to summarize, years ago, we had a lot of quarrels—none serious, particularly—but now we don’t.” Jimmy said.

On the 75th anniversary of the couple, Jimmy and Rosalynn had talked in an interview. “We have grown closer to each other. We’ve learned from each other. And we have learned to accommodate each other’s idiosyncrasies,” Jimmy said.

“And we’ve learned how to give each other plenty of space. We can each do our own thing and the other one absent.”

“Jimmy is really kind and he will hold out his hand, take my hand when we are walking down the street or sitting in the car. Squeeze my hand. Those kinds of things draw me closer to him,” Rosalynn added.

“I think our partnership started before (his presidency) when I was keeping books at our farm supply business. It was not too long before I got to know more about the business on paper than he knew about it and I could advise him. For instance, once we started doing peanuts and cotton and we started shelling corn, I realized from the books that we were not making any money. That we were losing money. I could advise him,” she continued.

“So that is how I think our partnership developed. That was the beginning of it.”

“We’ve had a kind of policy on which we’ve agreed,” Jimmy Carter said.

“We give each other plenty of space to do our own things. And we try to find things we like to do together, and we try to concentrate on them. We took up downhill skiing when I was 62 years old. She was 59. We’ve taken up bird-watching and playing tennis and fly-fishing. So we’ve got a lot of common things we do together.”

Sadly, Rosalynn Carter passed away at the age of 96, as she was revealed her diagnosis with dementia on the May of 2023.

“We try to forgive each other every night for any differences we may have had during the day. We try to read the Bible every day. Most of the time late in the evening,”

“And we try to reconcile and never go to sleep with any lingering argument.”

“With shyness gone and hair caressed with gray, her smile still makes the birds forget to sing and me to hear their song,”

“Rosalynn was my equal partner in everything I ever accomplished,” Jimmy had said.

“She gave me wise guidance and encouragement when I needed it. As long as Rosalynn was in the world, I always knew somebody loved and supported me.”

Chip Carter said, “Besides being a loving mother and extraordinary First Lady, my mother was a great humanitarian in her own right. Her life of service and compassion was an example for all Americans. She will be sorely missed not only by our family but by the many people who have better mental health care and access to resources for caregiving today.”

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