President Joe Biden has joked to aides that the key to a long and lasting marriage is âgood sex,â according to a new book about the nationâs first ladies, that casts a spotlight on his 47-year romance with Jill Biden.
âAmerican Woman â The Transformation of the Modern First Lady, from Hillary Clinton to Jill Biden,â was authored by New York Times White House correspondent Katie Rogers and comes out this week.
The part about sex takes up only a few paragraphs in the 276-page book but has already generated headlines.
Rogers writes that Biden opted against running for president in 2004, a decision punctuated to aides when Jill Biden entered the room wearing a halter top with the word âNOâ scrawled on her stomach.
Joe Biden, now 81, told a group of supporters that year that he had little interest in running for president. âIâd rather be at home making love to my wife while my children are asleep,â he said.
The comment drew a shrug from a spokesperson at the time who said then-Senator Biden was âfrankly totally in love with his wife,â Rogers writes.
âJoe may have tamped down on his public bedroom declarations [in] winning the presidency, but he has joked to aides that âgood sexâ is the key to a lasting and happy marriage, much to his wifeâs chagrin,â according to Rogers.
The book describes the anguish Joe Biden experienced when his first wife, Neilia, died in a 1972 car crash along with their daughter Naomi.
He and Jill married in 1977, but it took five proposals from Biden to get Jill to agree.
âIâve been as patient as I know how to be, but this has got my Irish up. Either you decide to marry me or thatâs it â Iâm out. Iâm not asking again,â Biden said on the fifth try, Rogers writes.
Jill Biden, an English teacher at a community college, was the first first lady to continue her professional career while in the role.
In a previous interview, she revealed that when Joe Biden was vice-president the couple decided to settle their disagreements via text message in order to avoid fighting in the presence of their Secret Service agents â and dubbed it fexting.