First lady Jill Biden’s maiden solo TV appearance with singer-songwriter Kelly Clarkson focused heavily on the pair’s shared experience with divorce, though she seemed to muddy the timeline of her romance with President Biden in the process.
Jill Biden separated from her first husband, Bill Stevenson, in 1974 after four years of marriage, while Clarkson filed for divorce last year from talent manager Brandon Blackstock. Clarkson wed Blackstock in 2013.
During an hourlong special filmed at the White House, Biden talked about the “shame and guilt” associated with divorce, telling Clarkson what she would say if she were Clarkson’s mother.
“You know, my mother always said to me, ‘Things are going to look better tomorrow, and if you can take one day at a time, and things will get better,'” Biden said in the episode of Clarkson’s NBC show, which aired Thursday.
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But Jill Biden also brushed over details regarding how she first met Joe, whom she married in 1977 after he proposed five times. With their wedding, she became the stepmother to his two surviving sons, Beau and Hunter. The couple went on to have a daughter, Ashley, born in 1981.
“I had met him once before, but it was kind of a blind date when he called me,” Biden said Thursday.
Stevenson caused a stir during the 2020 campaign when he accused Biden of having an affair with Joe after they met in 1972, when Stevenson and his then-wife volunteered on the president’s first U.S. Senate bid in Delaware. At the time, Joe Biden was married to his first wife, Neilia.
Neilia Biden and their 1-year-old daughter, Naomi, tragically died that Christmas in a car crash.
Stevenson said he believed the two were having an affair in August 1974 and claims he later confirmed his suspicions that October, when he was told the then-senator had been seen driving his wife’s brown Corvette.
In her book Where the Light Enters, though, Jill Biden skips over that period and describes Joe calling her “out of the blue” in 1975 after his brother, Frank, gave him her number. Frank Biden had known Jill during college.
“He had only sought me out because he’d seen photos of me at the Wilmington airport,” she wrote of a modeling job she accepted to help a friend promote New Castle County Parks and Recreation. “Joe apparently pointed at the photo of me and said, ‘Look, Frankie. That’s the kind of girl I’d like to date.’ And Frank said, ‘Well, why don’t you, then? I know her.'”
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Thursday’s TV appearance showcased a wide-ranging conversation between Biden and Clarkson. The duo discussed Biden’s support of cancer research after Beau’s death in 2015, as well as first dogs Champ and Major.
