May-December Presidents

Here are five U.S. presidents who married women at least 15 years younger than themselves.

Born in 1751, JAMES MADISON remained a bachelor throughout the Revolutionary War and well beyond: he married Dolley Payne Todd, a widow, on 15 September 1794. He was 43, she was 26. A decade earlier Madison had been engaged briefly to 16-year-old Catherine Floyd. (That marriage would also have qualified him for this list.) Floyd broke the engagement, and Dolley Madison became one of America's most famous first ladies.

JOHN TYLER (54) married Julia Gardiner (24) on 26 June 1844, becoming the first president to be married while in office. Their 30-year age difference was the largest for any presidential marriage. Tyler's first wife Letitia Christian Tyler had died in the White House of a stroke in 1842. Tyler had eight children by his first wife and seven by his second (born during the spans of 1815-1830 and 1846-1860). Pearl, his last child with Julia, was born when Tyler was 70 years old.

GROVER CLEVELAND was the second president to be married while in office, and is the only president wed on the White House grounds. Cleveland was 49 when he married 21-year-old FRANCES FOLSOM on 2 June 1886. Folsom was the daughter of one of Cleveland's good friends; according to William DeGregorio's The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, "Cleveland at 27 met his future wife shortly after she was born. He took an avuncular interest in the child, buying her a baby carriage and otherwise doting on her as she grew up." It was Cleveland's first marriage, although before becoming president he had a famous affair which was trumpeted by his opponents during the elections of 1884.

BENJAMIN HARRISON was 62 when he married the widow Mary Scott Lord Dimmick on 6 April 1896, three years after he left office. Dimmick was 37 and the niece of Caroline Harrison, the president's first wife. Caroline Harrison had died of tuberculosis in the White House in 1892; she and Harrison were married for 39 years and had two children. (She was actually a year older than the president.) Benjamin Harrison was 63 when Elizabeth, his first and only child with Mary, was born in 1897.

WOODROW WILSON (58) married Edith Bolling Galt (43) on 18 December 1915. Wilson was president at the time, and his first wife, the former Ellen Axson, had died the year before. The widow of a Washington jeweler, Galt met the president while he was still in mourning for his first wife. (The romance, which began less than a year after the death of Ellen Wilson, was considered scandalous by some.) Edith Wilson became known as the "secret president" for the way she handled many of Wilson's duties after he was partially paralyzed by a stroke in 1919.

Honorable Mention: MILLARD FILLMORE (aged 58 when he married his 45-year-old second wife, Caroline Carmichael McIntosh)... JOHN F. KENNEDY (aged 36 when he married 24-year-old Jacqueline Bouvier in 1953)... RONALD REAGAN (he was 41 and divorced, Nancy Davis was 30)... JAMES MONROE (he was 27, Elizabeth Kortright was 17)... ABRAHAM LINCOLN (he was 33, Mary Todd was 23).

For a complete list of presidents, go to our page of U.S. Presidents.

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