Billy Graham - Family

Family

On August 13, 1943, Graham married Wheaton classmate Ruth Bell (1920–2007), whose parents were Presbyterian missionaries in China. Her father, L. Nelson Bell, was a general surgeon. Graham met her at Wheaton: "I saw her walking down the road towards me and I couldn't help but stare at her as she walked. She looked at me and our eyes met and I felt that she was definitely the woman I wanted to marry." Bell thought that Graham "wanted to please God more than any man I'd ever met." They married two months after graduation and later lived in a log cabin designed by Ruth Graham in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Montreat, North Carolina. Ruth Graham died on June 14, 2007, at the age of 87.

Graham and his wife had five children together: Virginia Leftwich (Gigi) Graham Tchividjian (born 1945; an inspirational speaker and author); Anne Graham Lotz (born 1948; runs AnGeL ministries); Ruth Graham (born 1950; founder and president of Ruth Graham & Friends, leads conferences throughout the U.S. and Canada); Franklin Graham (born 1952), who serves as president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and as president and CEO of international relief organization, Samaritan's Purse; and Nelson Edman Graham (born 1958; a pastor who runs East Gates Ministries International, which distributes Christian literature in China). Graham has 19 grandchildren and numerous great-grandchildren. His grandson Tullian Tchividjian is senior pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

To ensure no one mistook his actions, Graham had a policy to avoid being alone with any woman other than his wife. This has come to be known as the Billy Graham Rule.