Rosalynn Carter

Born in Plains, Georgia, she graduated valedictorian in 1946, the same year she married Jimmy Carter after falling for a photograph of him in his Naval Academy uniform. She helped him win the Georgia governorship in 1970 and used her time as the state's first lady to focus on mental health advocacy. When he won the presidency in 1976, she made it clear she had no interest in tradition: she attended Cabinet meetings, represented him in meetings with foreign leaders, and campaigned hard for causes she believed in. He called her an equal partner. After Reagan's landslide ended their White House tenure in 1981, she kept going - writing books, working with the Carter Center, expanding Habitat for Humanity, and founding the Institute for Caregivers in 1987. She and her husband received the Presidential Medal of Freedom together in 1999, seventy-seven years into a marriage that lasted until her death in 2023.