Laura Bush - Marriage and Family

Marriage and Family

She met George W. Bush in July 1977 when mutual friends John and Jan O'Neill invited her and Bush to a backyard barbecue at their home. He proposed to her at the end of September and they were married on November 5 of that year at the First United Methodist Church in Midland, the same church in which she had been baptized. Laura bought a tan, two-toned dress off the rack for the wedding. The couple honeymooned in Cozumel, Mexico.

The year after their marriage, the couple began campaigning for George W. Bush's 1978 Congressional candidacy. According to George Bush, when he asked her to marry him, she had said, "Yes. But only if you promise me that I'll never have to make a campaign speech." She soon relented, and gave her first stump speech for him in 1978 on the courthouse steps in Muleshoe, Texas. After narrowly winning the primary, he lost the general election.

The Bushes had tried to conceive for three years, but pregnancy did not happen easily. On November 25, 1981, Laura Bush gave birth to twin daughters, Barbara and Jenna. The twins were born five weeks early by an emergency Caesarean section, as Laura had developed life-threatening pre-eclampsia (toxemia). The twins graduated from high school in 2000 and attended Yale University and the University of Texas at Austin, respectively, in 2004. To date, Bush is the only First Lady to have given birth to twins.

George W. Bush credited his wife with his decision to stop drinking in 1986. She is also credited with having a stabilizing effect on his private life. According to People magazine reporter Jane Simms Podesta, "She is the steel in his back. She is a civilizing influence on him. I think she built him, in many ways, into the person he is today."

Several times a year, Bush and her husband travel to their sprawling family estate, the Bush compound, better known as Walker's Point. Located in Kennebunkport, Maine, the compound is where Bush family gatherings have been held for nearly 100 years.