People do and will have differing political opinions about the one-term United States presidency of Jimmy Carter, but it would be difficult to find fault with the success of his marriage.
Early next month, Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, will celebrate their 70th anniversary, a milestone in its own right but one that may seem increasingly harder to reach with couples tying the knot later, if at all, and a still too high divorce rate.
Like all couples, the former first couple have had their ups and downs. But unlike many couples, they did not give up at the first sign of strife, treat their marriage as an experiment or leave one another to find themselves.
While it is not nor ever has been true that half of all U.S. marriages end in divorce, most people would agree that the divorce rate has climbed since the Carters married on July 7, 1946.
Carter was a young naval officer when the couple married, and the then-Rosalynn Smith was 18 years old. While Carter was in the Navy, his wife was struggling to take care of one, then two, then three young boys. Then when the couple moved back to Plains to run the family agribusiness when Carter’s father died, they lived in public housing and struggled to make ends meet.