Could the US soon have an NFL cheerleader as its first lady?
GOP presidential hopeful Marco Rubio certainly hopes so. The Florida senator gave a well-received performance at Wednesday night’s televised debate, but it’s his wife, Jeanette Dousdebes Rubio, who keeps turning heads.
Rubio’s wife of 17 years — and the mother of his four children — was a Miami Dolphins cheerleader from 1997 to 1998. Today, of course, she’s a different sort of cheerleader — for her husband’s presidential campaign, appearing by his side at major public events.
After attending the same Miami high school and dating throughout college, the pair married in 1998, right after Rubio finished law school at the University of Miami.
Back in April, the pair told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that Rubio proposed to Jeanette in 1997 on the top of the Empire State Building on Valentine’s Day because of the couple’s mutual fandom of “Sleepless in Seattle.”
Jeanette is also a notably terrible driver. Page Six reported in January that she crashed the family’s Ford SUV into a $78,000 Porsche parked at a hotel in South Beach. She also had, as of 2015, 13 traffic violations, according to the New York Times.
Jeanette was, at first, displeased with her husband’s desires to enter politics. “My political career had deprived her of the settled, predictable family life she longed for,” Rubio wrote in his memoir, “An American Son.” But now she seems to dutifully participate in all of the formalities expected of a senator’s wife.
Today she is content with staying in the background and being a stay-at-home mom to their four kids. Jeanette is also very religious, reportedly taking her family regularly to two places of religious worship: a Catholic church and the Baptist megachurch Christ Fellowship.
In the few TV interviews she’s given, Jeanette is remarkably soft-spoken, answering questions quietly in few words and letting her husband fill in the blanks. But she had a longer, honest answer, during an interview with CBS in 2012, for how she feels when Marco is off in Washington, DC.
“I’m used to it, but it’s not easy. You know it’s not easy when I have to do things with the kids: activities, homework,” she said. “It’s like being a single mom. It is.”
Marco, laughing awkwardly, replied, “Thanks for making me feel good, guys. I appreciate it.”