“In October of 1924, in the tiny town of Plains, Georgia, population barely six hundred, a woman named Allie Smith gave birth to a daughter she named Eleanor Rosalynn, and on the same day in the same town, a family named Carter was already raising a boy named James Earl Jr. who was just shy of his first birthday….

His mother asked how he could possibly know that after one evening. He said he just knew. Rosalynn was more careful. She had told herself growing up that she did not want to date young men, did not know how to talk to them, and never particularly imagined getting married at all. She turned down Jimmy’s first proposal. He proposed again. On July 7, 1946, at the Plains Methodist Church, she said yes. He was twenty-one. She was eighteen. Their marriage would eventually outlast every presidential union in American history,