Mamie Eisenhower’s Marriage Was Much Nastier Than You Thought

January 1953. Eisenhower finishes the oath and turns and kisses his wife — the first president to do it. America decides they’re the perfect couple. Mamie in pink, buttons reading I like Ike, but I love Mamie. Here’s what the buttons left out. For three years of the war she saw him once. Every September twenty-fourth he sent her yellow roses for a child neither of them would name out loud. There was a rumor about an Irish driver she was never given the evidence to answer. And the woman everyone pitied ended up holding the letters. San Antonio, October 1915.

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