Bill Clinton first eyed Hillary Rodham in a class on civil liberties at Yale Law School in 1970. There were only about seventyfive women among the some five hundred students admitted that year to the law school, and Hillary, remarkably self?assured and driven, stood out even among the creme de la creme.
For that matter, so did Bill. Hillary noticed him first in the student lounge. As she walked past, she overheard him boasting, in his Southern lilt, that in the state of Arkansas, '... we have the biggest watermelons in the world.' Since conversations in the Yale student lounge tended to be more cerebral, Hillary wondered aloud to a friend, 'Who is that?'
'That's Bill Clinton from Arkansas, and that [Arkansas] is all he ever talks about,' said her friend.
The two just couldn't seem to ignore each other. Bill was handsome, with an easygoing charm and a boyish smile that could make grown women wilt. Hillary, twentythree, even in her au naturel state ? no makeup, Coke?bottle eyeglasses, flannel shirts and untended brown hair ? also had a definite magnetism.
When Hillary caught Bill staring at her again, this time in the law school library, she decided to make the first move. She got up from her chair and marched right over. 'If you're going to keep looking at me and I'm going to keep looking at you, we ought to at least know each other. I'm Hillary Rodham.'
Stunned by her boldness, Bill, twenty?four, later recalled: 'I couldn't remember my name.'
'I knew from the minute I saw her that if I got involved with her I would fall in love with her,' Bill told Newsweek magazine years later.
Their first date was strictly casual, a stroll through a Yale art gallery during a Mark Rothko exhibit. Though they had vastly different upbringings, they discovered that they saw the world through remarkably similar eyes. Hillary had transformed from a sash-wearing 'Goldwater Girl' in Park Ridge, a conservative, middle-class suburb of Chicago, to a liberal political activist and president of the student government at Wellesley. A political science major, she was a natural-born organizer and student leader involved in rallies for everything from improved minority admissions to banning curfews. She was the first student invited to deliver a commencement address (which she did without notes), an accomplishment that landed her picture in Life magazine.
Bill, who grew up in the rural outposts of Hope and, later, Hot Springs, Arkansas, had been intent on a career in medicine until, at the age of sixteen, he shook hands with President John F. Kennedy in the White House Rose Garden. From that point on, he thought only of politics. While enrolled at Georgetown University, he spent his junior year working for Senator William J. Fulbright of Arkansas, then chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. After graduating in 1969, he attended Oxford as a Rhodes scholar. In 1970, he enrolled at Yale, a year after Hillary.
It was a perfect match. Both were both kind of square. Neither had their sights set on a high-paying law career. Instead, both saw their futures centered around public service. Everyone knew that Bill was planning to run for public office. Hillary was already absorbed in children's rights and planned to spend the summer working for the Children's Defense Fund.
Not everyone, however, thought that they were made for each other. 'You should stick to Southern girls,' his mother, Virginia Kelley, and brother Roger both informed Bill after they came to New Haven to watch Bill and Hillary in moot court.
A year after they met, they were living together in a rented house. Graduating a year ahead of Bill, Hillary decided to stay with him in New Haven and study child development at the Yale Child Study Center.
After he graduated, Bill took a job teaching at the University of Arkansas Law School in Fayetteville. Hillary went to work as an attorney at the Children's Defense Fund until she became a counsel for the House Judiciary Committee impeachment investigation of President Richard Nixon.
While they were apart, they racked up hefty phone bills talking late into the night. When Nixon resigned, Hillary disregarded offers from top law firms in New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., and made her move to Fayetteville. She was going to try it there for a year. 'I loved him,' she explained. 'I had to.'
Bill was absorbed in his ill-fated run for Congress, and Hillary started teaching criminal law and trial advocacy at the University of Arkansas and founded the school's legal aid program. She went back home to think things over. When she returned, Bill picked her up at the airport.
'I bought that house you like, so you better marry me because I can't live in it by myself,' he announced.
Their brick house was the setting for their wedding on October m, 1975. Hillary, il and their families stayed up half the night painting it. Bill wanted a big bash,
Hillary had something more intimate in mind. They compromised on a private emony followed by a reception for one hundred at the home of state Democratic ty chairman Morris Henry and his wife, Ann. Hillary wore an old-fashionedking dress designed by Jessica McClintock, which she bought in a hurry at ,lard's department store. For the occasion, she left her eyeglasses off. The wedding e was iced with pale yellow roses.
They honeymooned in Acapulco. A year later, Bill was elected Arkansas State torney General and they moved to Little Rock. In 1978, he became the country's ungest governor but was defeated in his re-election bid two years later. Hillary kept r maiden name as First Lady of Arkansas, but public sentiment forced her to adopt fill's surname before his successful 1982 gubernatorial campaign. In i98o, their aughter, Chelsea, was born. Bill was elected President of the United States in 1992. iillary, once named by the National Lam Review as one of the 'too Most Influential awyers in America,' became known as Bill's presidential partner as well as First Lady.
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Bill Clinton first eyed Hillary Rodham in a class on civil liberties at Yale Law School in 1970. There were only about seventyfive women among the some five hundred students admitted that year to the law school, and Hillary, remarkably self?assured and driven, stood out even among the creme de la creme.
