Surprising Things You Miss About Bill and Hillary Clinton’s Marriage

Bill and Hillary Clinton have been married for decades. A political powerhouse, the couple has achieved pinnacles of success together — Bill was president of the United States and even became a Grammy winner, meanwhile Hillary’s been a United States senator and even served as secretary of state. They’ve also faced intense scrutiny, like rumors that Chelsea Clinton isn’t actually Bill’s daughter as well as multiple infidelity scandals on Bill’s side. They’re a fascinating duo that has somehow managed to stay together despite being at the center of some of the most intense political scandals of the 20th and 21st centuries.

But there’s more to Bill and Hillary’s marriage than meets the eye, and there are lots of details about their relationship that get swept out of sight and out of mind because the general public is so focused on the major rumors. Here are some weird things about Bill and Hillary Clinton’s marriage that everyone ignores.

Most people don’t hesitate to say yes when they’re offered a proposal, but that wasn’t the case for Hillary Clinton when Bill Clinton first asked her to marry him. Hillary turned down Bill’s proposal multiple times. As she shared on an episode of “The Drew Barrymore Show” in 2023, “My husband had asked me to marry him twice, and I said, ‘Not now, no’ … The third time was a charm, and then he said, ‘Well let’s hurry up and do it before you change your mind.'” In retrospect, perhaps Hillary’s hesitation was an instinct for what was to come.

But as Hillary has elucidated, she loved Bill, she just wasn’t quite ready to get married the first couple of times he asked. “I was desperately in love with him but utterly confused about my life and future. So I said ‘No not now’ — what I meant was ‘Give me time,'” Hillary recalled (via The Knot). When Hillary finally did say yes, it was after Bill had informed her that he had purchased a home in Arkansas that she expressed she liked. “Do you remember that house you liked? Well, I bought it, so now you’d better marry me because I can’t live in it by myself,” Bill said to her. Obviously the two went through with the wedding, and just days after Bill’s third proposal, he and Hillary got married in a small ceremony, celebrating the nuptials with a backyard reception.

Bill Clinton is arguably most famous for having an affair with former White House aide Monica Lewinsky while serving as president, but he was actually plagued with infidelity allegations long before the late ’90s. The implications weren’t quite as intense, though, so Bill’s first major cheating scandal goes largely unforgotten.

In 1992, just months before he was elected president, Bill, who was the governor of Arkansas at the time, was accused of having had an affair with a woman named Gennifer Flowers. The allegations looked as though they could potentially derail Bill’s campaign, just as he was emerging as the favorite for the Democratic nomination.

To mitigate, Bill and Hillary Clinton sat down for an interview on “60 Minutes” with Steve Kroft. The interview, which aired right after the Super Bowl, was much of the nation’s first introduction to Hillary. Bill danced around the question of whether he had an affair with Flowers, but he did acknowledge that he and Hillary had gone through some marital struggles. The American people were more taken with Hillary’s comments, though, in which she stood her ground concerning her relationship with her husband. “You know I’m not sittin’ here as some little woman, standing by my man like Tammy Wynette. I’m sittin’ here because I love him, and I respect him, and I honor what he’s been through and what we’ve been through together,” she said. “You know, if that’s not enough for people, then heck, don’t vote for him.”

At the time, Bill Clinton’s alleged affair with Gennifer Flowers was huge news, but it was nothing compared to what would happen near the end of his second term as president. In a scandalous political affair that will always haunt him, Bill admitted to cheating on his wife, Hillary Clinton, with former White House aide Monica Lewinsky. Due to alleged behavior surrounding the affair, Bill was impeached, though he was ultimately acquitted and finished the remainder of his second term. “We all bring our baggage to life, and sometimes we do things we shouldn’t do. It was awful what I did,” Bill said in retrospect of his affair on the documentary “Hillary” (via “Today”).

What was perhaps more stunning than the affair, however, was that Hillary and Bill’s marriage survived the scandal. To this day, ardent Clinton dissenters still criticize Hillary for staying with Bill, but she doesn’t regret her decision. “I think the gutsiest thing I’ve ever done, well, personally, [is] make the decision to stay in my marriage,” Hillary said on an episode of “Good Morning America” (via ABC News). The decision to stay wasn’t made lightly, though. “I defended and stood by him because I thought the impeachment process was wrong, but that wasn’t the necessary answer to what I would do with my marriage,” Hillary said. Despite the critics, the Clintons weathered the storm, and none of their subsequent scandals have had anything to do with their marriage.

When neither Bill nor Hillary Clinton is in the public eye, it’s easy to imagine them as a unit like any other in the United States. It’s especially easy when they share what they like to do together, like binge watching television shows. But when they admit what they binge watch, it’s a little harder to picture them interacting like a regular married couple.

“I watch ‘Madam Secretary’ and I watch ‘[The] Good Wife,'” Hillary said on an episode of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” in 2015. “But, you know, we watch a lot of different odds and ends. We have a good time.” For anyone who hasn’t seen “The Good Wife,” it’s a series starring Julianna Margulies who has to go back to work while her husband, a former elected official played by Chris Noth, serves time following a high profile sex and corruption scandal.

As one can imagine, the storylines on “The Good Wife” might hit a little close to home for the Clintons. While Bill never went to prison for his indiscretion, the pair can relate to public humiliation in the wake of a political scandal better than most. Hillary also noted that she and Bill enjoyed watching “House of Cards,” another series that could potentially stir up uncomfortable memories from their respective times in office. Even host Stephen Colbert commented on the irony of the Clintons watching the Netflix show. “Do you watch [‘House of Cards’] and ever yawn and go, ‘This, so old hat,'” Colbert joked.

In today’s world, when scandals happen, public figures are expected to make statements regarding situations within days. But things were different at the time of Bill Clinton’s affair, and while he addressed his wrongdoings plenty — he had to in part due to his impeachment — Hillary Clinton waited years to address the affair, something many people found odd. While she did defend her husband publicly and allude some to the affair, like in a 1999 interview with Talk, it wasn’t until her 2003 memoir “Living History” that Hillary dug into the scandal and how it made her feel. “Gulping for air, I started crying and yelling at him, ‘What do you mean? What are you saying? Why did you lie to me?’ I was furious and getting more so by the second. He just stood there saying over and over again, ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I was trying to protect you and Chelsea,”’ Hillary wrote in her book of when Bill told her about the affair.

Upon its publication, Hillary was criticized for her book and her decision to stay married to Bill, but she remained firm in her words and her choices. “I just have to do what I think is the right thing for me to do, because there are so many different people with so many different agendas. You couldn’t get