Joe Biden was no shoe-in with Jill.
First Lady Jill Biden gave a good ribbing to President Biden over his style when they first met in 1975.
Jill spoke at a fund-raiser for her husband at the Upper East Side’s Lotos Club and shared: “It was the ’70s . . . It was Vietnam, love beads, 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.”
Then, “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 . . . I took one look at his perfect suit and his leather loafers and I thought, ‘Thank God it’s only one date!’ ”
Roast master Jill added, “Well, one date eventually turned into a marriage proposal. And OK, if I am being completely honest, it was five proposals, because this was not part of my plan.”
She also recalled of her hesitation at the time, “more than that, it wasn’t just my heart that was on the line… as many of you know, years before, Joe’s wife, Neilia, and his baby daughter were killed in a car accident.”
Biden was widowed in 1972, and was left a single dad to sons Beau and Hunter Biden.
“After all that his two sons, Beau and Hunter, had lost,” Jill recalled, “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.”
For his part, President Biden has previously said of the couple’s first meeting, “My brother set us up on a blind date, and when I went out with her the first time, I knew that this was the woman, I really did.”
He also told Drew Barrymore in an interview with Jill last year, “I had to ask her five times, and the fifth time, I was in South Africa, trying to see Nelson Mandela.
When he returned to the States and saw Jill again, he told Barrymore on her show, “I said, ‘I’m asking you one more time.’ I said, ‘You don’t have to say when, but if. If you say no, I understand, and that’s it.’ I looked at her and said, ‘Will you marry me?’ She goes, ‘OK.’ Swear to God.”
Jill — who was previously married for five years from 1970 to 1975 — has written for Time Magazine of Biden’s five proposals, “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.”
The Lotos Club event for Biden was hosted by Charles J. Alaimo, Karen Adler, Christopher Lowe, Bonnie Datt, Susie Stern and the Tri-State Maxed-Out Womens PAC, according to an invitation.
