Here's Why Jill Biden Rejected Four of Joe Biden's Proposals Before Finally Saying 'I Do'

During Joe Biden's fundraiser in 2023 at Lotos Club on the Upper East Side, First Lady Jill Biden opened up about their first meeting in 1975 and why it took five proposals for her to finally say yes to him. As reported by The Independent, she shared, "It was the ’70s...It was Vietnam, love beads, and equal rights. I wore my hair down to the middle of my waist, and so did most of the men I dated...Remember what you were wearing then? Clogs, bell-bottoms, tie-dyes. One day, I was asked out on a date from out of the blue, and that evening a handsome young senator showed up at my door."

She continued, "I took one look at his perfect suit and his leather loafers and I thought, ‘Thank God it’s only one date.’ Well, one date eventually turned into a marriage proposal." She added, "...if I am being completely honest, it was five proposals because this was not part of my plan."

After losing his first wife in 1972, Joe was forced to raise his boys Beau and Hunter by himself. Jill recalled, "After all that his two sons... had lost. I knew that if I said yes to Joe, it had to be forever. So eventually I realized that my love for Joe and the boys outweighed any fears I had, and I said yes. And here we are 46 years later."

When Jill was still a college student, she married Bill Stevenson. Their marriage lasted five years, from 1970 to 1975. After the couple's divorce, Jill allegedly felt reluctant to fall in love once again. She told Time, "After the disappointment of my divorce, I never wanted to feel so out of control of my heart again. But in the months that Joe and I were dating, that desire ran up against a new reality— I was falling in love."

Joe was born in November 1942, and Jill in June 1951. He was 32, and Jill was 23 when they first met. For Jill, the age gap did appear to be an issue initially. In 2016, she confessed to Vogue, "I was a senior, and I had been dating guys in jeans and clogs and T-shirts, he came to the door and he had a sport coat and loafers, and I thought, 'God, this is never going to work, not in a million years.' He was 9 years older than I am!"

But after they got back from their A Man and a Woman viewing in Philadelphia, Jill assumed that the other guys she was accustomed to were the issue. She added, "We really hit it off. When we came home...he shook my hand good night...I went upstairs and called my mother at 1:00 a.m. and said, 'Mom, I finally met a gentleman'."