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Could you think of anything more romantic than a political convention? Well, we could probably come up with a few. (Weddings, honeymoons, ect…) But at last night’s Democratic National Convention, Bill Clinton took the stage as the potential first gentlemen — nice title, huh? — and turned the political bash into a bit of a love fest, as he shared the super cute moment he first laid eyes on his wife, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, and a proposal story sweet enough to make you swoon. However, as it turns out, his now-famous engagement story may not be totally true…
On Tuesday night, Bill Clinton began his speech at the DNC with the decades-long love story between himself and the presidential nominee, beginning when they first met at Yale Law School. “In the spring of 1971, I met a girl,” Clinton began. “The first time I saw her, we were appropriately enough in a class about civil rights. She had thick blonde hair, big glasses, wore no makeup. She exuded this sense of strength and self-possession that I found magnetic.”
Too nervous to talk to the girl (He had a right to be nervous — that girl might be our first female president, after all!), it wasn’t until later that the pair first spoke. “Then one night in the law library… I saw that girl again. And she was staring back at me,” remembered Clinton. “She walked the whole length of the library and said, ‘Look, if you’re going to keep staring at me, and now I’m staring back. We might as well know each other’s name. I’m Hillary Rodham. Who are you?'”
A few days later, still trying to impress his future bride, the former president spotted Rodham-Clinton in line to register for classes and raced to join her. “We stood in line and talked… and I thought I was doing pretty well. Then we got to the front of the line and the registrar looked up and said, ‘Bill what are you doing here, you registered this morning!'” Oops! Thwarted!
“I turned red,” the former president recalled. “And she laughed that big laugh of hers. And I thought, well heck, since my cover’s been blown, I just went ahead and asked her to take a walk down to the art museum. We’ve been walking, talking, and laughing together ever since.” And the rest, as they say, is history. (Literally, it might in the history books one day…)
Photo: Hillary Clinton via Twitter
But when Clinton finally proposed, he surprisingly received a resounding “no” from the future Democratic nominee. So, ever-persistent, he asked two more times before she finally said yes. “The third time was the charm,” he said. “I married my best friend.” But before the wedding bells rang, Clinton actually tried to convince his bride not marry him just yet.
“I said, ‘I really want to you marry me, but you shouldn’t do it,'” Clinton recalled for last night’s DNC crowd. “I said, ‘I know most of the young Democrats our age who want to go into politics, they mean well and they speak well, but none of them are as good as you are at actually doing things to make positive changes in people’s lives.’ So I suggested she go home to Illinois or move to New York and look for a chance to run for office. She just laughed and said, ‘Are you out of your mind? Nobody would ever vote for me.'” (Funny how things work out, right?)
But as sweet as that story may seem, it might not be completely true. As The Huffington Post points out, the former president has only recently began telling the terrific tale of trying to convince his future bride to run for office. And even Hillary Clinton herself doesn’t exactly remember the moment the same, telling New York Magazine, “I don’t think he said that when he actually proposed… But it was kind of a theme that he would go back to.”
Well, at least they remember the same anniversary date, right? Right?!
See More: Hillary and Bill Clinton’s Love Story and Wedding, in Photos