Scandalous Romance: The Love Story of Edith Bolling Galt (1872-1961) and Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924)
“I turned a corner and met my fate,” Edith Bolling Galt Wilson “I need you, as a boy needs his sweetheart, and a strong man his helpmate and heart’s comrade,” Woodrow Wilson to Edith Bolling Galt during their courtship. What did Mrs. Galt do when President Wilson proposed to her? She fell out of bed. – Popular joke in 1915 This is the tale of one of the most romantic love stories in White House history. No, I’m not talking about Olivia Pope and Fitzgerald Grant from Scandal . I’m talking about the love story between Edith Bolling Galt and Woodrow Wilson. Their story is not only one of the most romantic in American history, but also one of the most scandalous and intriguing. It encompasses death, grief, forbidden romance, , passion, politics, war, and a cover-up perpetrated by the First Lady of the United States. At a time when women couldn’t vote on a national level, rarely held jobs other than domestic or schoolteacher, for a brief time a woman ran the White House a