Barbara Pierce Bush was just 16 years old when she met future husband George H.W. Bush, beginning an epic romance that would last more than 76 years until her death at 92 on Tuesday.
Through triumphs and tragedies, a world war, and four years in the White House, the former first couple’s love for each other not only endured but grew stronger with time.
George reflected on their decades-long romance in a collection of letters published in 1999, writing: “You have given me joy that few men know.”
“I have climbed perhaps the highest mountain in the world, but even that cannot hold a candle to being Barbara’s husband,” he wrote, according to the Associated Press.
In a recent interview with the Smith Alumnae Quarterly, Barbara said her husband “has given me the world. He is the best — thoughtful and loving,” she said, according to Glamour. “I am still old and still in love with the man I married 72 years ago.”
It all began at a Christmas dance in 1941, when Barbara Pierce, a publisher’s daughter from Rye who was going to school in South Carolina, was 16 and George, a naval aviator in training, was 17. It was love at first sight when George spotted Barbara, in a green and red holiday dress, from across the room and asked a friend to introduce them.
“Since I didn’t waltz, we sat the dance out. And several more after that, talking and getting to know each other,” George wrote in his autobiography, according to Newsweek. “It was a storybook meeting.”
After a year and a half of dating, George proposed in August 1943 — right before he was deployed to serve in World War II as a Navy pilot, Brides.com reported. George named three of his Navy planes after his sweetheart, including a torpedo bomber called “Barbara.”
Poppy and Bar, their nicknames for each other, bridged the gap between them by writing overseas love letters.
In one letter dated Dec. 12, 1943, George wrote to his “darling Bar” about how happy he was to read their engagement announcement in the newspaper.
“I love you, precious, with all my heart and to know that you love me means my life. How often I have thought about the immeasurable joy that will…
