Childhood Friend Romance / Real Life

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• Theodore Roosevelt's second wife Edith (the first one, Alice, fell to Death by Childbirth) lived next door to the future president in her childhood and was best friends with his sister Corinne Roosevelt.
• Harry S. Truman. He first met his future wife, Bess Wallace, when they were five in Sunday School. From fifth grade through high school, they were in the same class. She turned him down the first time he proposed (in 1911); after time in various jobs, plus a stint as an artillery captain on the Western Front, she finally accepted in 1919 (shortly after he opened a promising haberdashery).
• Jimmy Carter was a family friend and neighbor of his future wife, Rosalynn Smith. His mother, a nurse, had actually delivered Rosalynn as a baby. Rosalynn later grew attracted to Jimmy at age 18, after seeing him in his naval uniform for the first time, and the two of them fell in love and were married only one year later. They remained Happily Married until her death in 2023.
• Saint Elisabeth of Hungary and her husband Louis IV of Thuringia. They double as Perfectly Arranged Marriage: they were engaged by their parents as kids, Elisabeth went to live with Louis's family as a little girl, and they fell in love as they grew up. He died a few years later, though, and Rebellious Princess Elisabeth went to great lengths to not be forced into an Arranged Marriage (even threatening to disfigure herself).
• Dorothea Hurley married her high school sweetheart Jon Bon Jovi at the height of the band's popularity when thousands of girls were throwing themselves at him. They're together to this day.
  • Ditto Cheryl Alley and Ron Howard, though he probably didn't have nearly as many girls throwing themselves at him back in the day.
• Former German federal chancellor Helmut Schmidt and Hannelore "Loki" Glaser first met in 1929 when they were both ten years old; they were happily married from 1942 until her death on 21 October 2010.
• David Eisenhower and Julie Nixon understandably got to be good friends as children in the late Fifties, seeing as his grandpa was President and her dad was Vice President for eight whole years (their first meeting was at the 1956 Republican National Convention when they were eight). They married just under a month before her father was sworn in as President and celebrated their 50th anniversary in 2018.
• Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev met his future wife Svetlana Vladimirovna Medvedeva when they were in middle school. They married after finishing their studies. They're still together.
• J. R. R. Tolkien and his future wife Edith met as teenagers. Tolkien's foster father eventually demanded that they stop seeing each other until Tolkien was twenty-one and a full adult. After a few years with no contact between them, John Ronald Tolkien wrote a letter to Edith on his 21st birthday to ask if she still wanted him. It turned out she had become engaged to another man, but only out of fear that Ronald had forgotten her; she broke off the other engagement promptly and agreed to marry him.
• John Quincy Adams met his wife Louisa when she was four and he was twelve. He met her again when she was 22. They were married shortly thereafter.
• William Petersen (of CSI fame) first met his current wife, Gina, when she was a small girl and he was a teenager working on a project with her filmmaker father. Fast forward a few decades to after Petersen's divorce from his first wife, and they got better acquainted, got married, and now have twin girls together.
• Say what you will about Luis Suárez's "teeth", but his own story is pretty incredible. Born and raised in abject poverty, he met a girl and started dating her, only to watch helplessly as her family moved to Spain. Suárez then began to seriously train in earnest, and eventually became a world-class player, and went to play in Europe just to find and marry this girl.
• Natalya Neidhart and her husband, TJ Wilson (aka WWE's Tyson Kidd), have known each other since childhood and had been dating for over a decade before they finally tied the knot. TJ was also childhood friends with Nattie's cousins Harry Smith (son of "The British Bulldog" Davey Boy Smith) and Ted Annis (aka Teddy Hart).
• Flower Girl and Ring Bearer Walk Down Same Aisle 17 Years Later as Bride and Groom.
• They met in preschool. Once, he stood up in class and declared "I’m gonna marry her someday!" He kept his promise.
• Popular UK Smash Ultimate player Afro Smash made a whacky poll directed at male Smashers about whether or not they..."nut before tournaments". A female gamer RPing as a character responded to the poll confused and not realizing he only was referring to male Smashers. This led to a misunderstanding that ultimately had another role-playing account owned by her childhood, best friend stepping in to try and clear things up. And the exchange that ensued from here ultimately led to one of most heartwarming Love Confessions you can find on the Internet. You can more easily see the full exchange here.
• Country singer Thomas Rhett met his wife Lauren in elementary school, referenced in his song "Life Changes":
  I've been waiting on her since the second grade...
• "From 8th grade to our wedding day..."
• Childhood friends marry 45 years after they were 'forced' to sit together in school.
• What It's Like to Marry Someone You've Known Your Whole Life.
• Preschool 'Sweethearts' Who Were Separated at Age 5 Reunite and Fall in Love After 12 Years Apart.
• Astronaut and US Senator John Glenn and Annie Castor knew each other since they were toddlers. They started dating in high school, married in 1943 and remained together until his death in 2016.
• Married couple, who met in college, find a picture of them both together at six-years-old.
• Two background actors from School of Rock are now married.

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