The Two-Timed Wives Club: 14 Spouses of Cheating Politicians

When it comes to “governmental affairs,” do you think of healthcare reform and national debt — or the extramarital dalliances of government officials? From U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner’s sexting scandal to former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent revelation of a secret son, many politicians have gotten caught committing marital treason. But in the midst of such high-profile sex scandals, we can’t help but turn our attention to the victims — the betrayed spouses. Even CBS is imitating the life of the political wife with art in the drama The Good Wife, portraying a woman who faces public humiliation after her state attorney husband is outed for political corruption and a sex scandal.

“These women stood by the men during the campaign process and at all the official events,” says relationship expert Laurie Puhn, author of Fight Less, Love More. And whether they continue to do so after they’ve been wronged is a big part of our fascination with the swindled spouses. While famous couples’ struggles make headlines, many Americans face the same question all the time: Can my marriage survive infidelity? Here’s how these high-profile marriages turned out after the affair.

Huma Abedin

When New York congressman Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin (a longtime aide to Hillary Clinton) wed last July, it wasn’t your average marriage ceremony. The nuptials were officiated by former President Bill Clinton — a political playboy in his own right. In fact, Clinton joked at the altar that “marrying a politician can be tough because it’s easy to distrust them,” according to the New York Daily News. Less than a year later, Weiner made substance out of a stereotype when he confessed to a history of online infidelity, including sending racy photos to another woman over Twitter and contacting a 17-year-old girl online. Just days after the news broke, the story got even more sensational: Abedin is reportedly pregnant. With Weiner now saying he'll step down from Congress, you can’t help but wonder: With a baby in tow, will Abedin stay or will she go?

Maria Shriver

Shortly before Anthony Weiner got nabbed for sending naughty Tweets, everyone was talking about another political marriage gone awry — that of former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver. After 25 years of marriage, Schwarzenegger came clean in May about a longtime affair with the family’s maid, with whom he had fathered a child more than 13 years ago. Making matters worse, Schwarzenegger and Shriver also have a son the same age. Years of deceit proved too much for this marriage: The couple decided to separate, though it’s unclear whether they will get divorced. In a press release, Shriver acknowledged that “this is a painful and heartbreaking time,” and asked for privacy — but after that, she did make a comment to her good friend Oprah that many believe was a jab at her ex. During a party for the talk-show host’s farewell episode, she said to Oprah, “You’ve given me love, support, wisdom, and most of all… the truth.”

Hillary Clinton

The secretary of state’s husband has some of the most notorious sex scandals in political history under his belt — Monica Lewinksy, Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers — but through all of his bouts of adultery, Hillary has stayed. Though she usually stays hush-hush about their marriage, she’s opened up on a few rare occasions, including on one episode of The Tyra Banks Show. Claiming she’s never doubted that her husband loves her, and crediting her resilience to her faith, she told Tyra, “I really had to dig down deep and think hard about what was right for me, what was right for my family.” Hillary’s advice to other spouses in her situation? “You have to do what is right for you — and that may not be what anybody else believes.”

Silda Spitzer

You could call Silda Spitzer the poster woman of “standing by your man.” After her husband Eliot Spitzer — former governor of New York — was caught hiring a high-priced prostitute, she stood by his side, stone-faced and somber, in a press conference in which he announced his resignation. The couple remains married three years later. Like many other betrayed first ladies, Silda has said very little about the scandal, but she did reveal this in a feature in Vogue magazine: “All of us face challenges in life. But we still have to use our internal power to move forward and try to respond the best we can, keeping in clear sight what is important to us.” In the same piece, she assured America that, despite his wandering ways, her husband really is a good guy: “He is a wonderful human being with a great sense of humor.”

Elizabeth Edwards

When Elizabeth Edwards lost her battle with breast cancer in December 2010 at the age of 61, the outpouring of grief made it apparent that she had won the hearts — and the sympathy — of the American people. During her illness, her husband John Edwards (former U.S. senator and two-time presidential contender) became involved with his campaign videographer Rielle Hunter and had a child with her, but he initially and repeatedly denied this fact. Still, Elizabeth struggled to save her marriage. In her book Resilience, she wrote, “Just as I don't want cancer to take over my life, I don't want this indiscretion, however long in duration, to take over my life either. But I need to deal with both; I need to find peace with both.” The Edwardses did ultimately separate during Elizabeth’s last year of life. “One day, I did not want to try anymore,” she wrote.

Tipper Gore

High-school sweethearts Al and Tipper Gore rocked America with a long, passionate kiss on stage at the 2000 Democratic Convention — but in May 2010, the couple shocked the nation when they called it quits after 40 years of marriage. It didn’t take long, however, for rumors about the former vice president’s two-timing ways to leak. Tabloids reported that Tipper was fed up with his affair with Laurie David, ex-wife of Curb Your Enthusiasm star Larry David (a rumor that has not been proven); next, a massage therapist from Portland dropped a bombshell when she made a complaint against Gore, claiming he forced “unwanted sexual contact” upon her. But the famous exes claim the rumors had nothing to do with their split — they said they had simply grown apart, and Tipper even stuck up for him during the scandal. “She feels strongly that people know she doesn't believe anything this woman is saying,” a friend of the couple told People magazine.

Dina Matos McGreevey

“I am a gay American,” former New Jersey governor Jim McGreevey famously announced in 2004 as he resigned from office and confessed to having an extramarital affair with a man, with wife Dina Matos McGreevey at his side. But she didn’t stay there long — the couple went on to endure a bitter divorce and custody battle. A few years later she published Silent Partner: A Memoir of My Marriage, in which New Jersey’s former first lady explained the emotional toll her husband’s deceit had on her: “Because I failed to read him, I've come to question my own ability to read anyone I might love.”

Jenny Sanford

After South Carolina governor Mark Sanford went missing for six days in 2009 — his whereabouts unknown to his staff and his wife — it soon became clear that he had been visiting a woman he was having an affair with in Argentina. Hours after arriving back in the United States, the governor held a press conference — but, unlike past politicians in the heat of a scandal, his wife of almost 20 years was absent. In fact, Jenny Sanford says she never considered herself a “traditional political spouse.” In her book Staying True, she revealed that she and her husband were in a trial separation when he went to Argentina. “Cut off this way, I hoped, Mark might understand what it would be like to lose his family in the form he'd always known it ... Before he left to ‘get his head right,’ as he'd explained it to the boys, he looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘I will not see her.’ That morning I knew he had broken that promise.” The couple soon divorced. What kept Sanford strong? Jenny credits “her local sisterhood,” a group of friends who never left her side, with reminding her that she was “truly loved and how nothing that happened that day could take any of that from me.”

Michelle Paige Patterson

David Patterson’s road to the governorship of New York was paved with scandal — he got the job after former governor Eliot Spitzer was linked to a prostitution ring. That’s why he and his wife, Michelle Paige Patterson, decided to be up front with the public from the get-go: They revealed that they had both strayed during a rocky period of their marriage years earlier. After their affairs settled, however, the couple realized that they wanted to make their marriage work (and he sought counseling). Michelle told the New York Daily News, “Like most marriages, you go through certain difficult periods. What's important is for your kids to see you worked them out."

Jackie Battley and Marianne Ginther

Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich has quite a personal track record. Here’s a recap: From 1962 to 1980, Gingrich was married to Jackie Battley (his former high school geometry teacher), but he left her for wife No. 2 — Marianne Ginther (pictured) — when Battley was recovering from uterine cancer in the hospital. He wed Ginther six months later (he proposed before asking Battley for a divorce), and then went on to have a six-year affair with Callista Bisek, a former Hill staffer 23 years his younger, while Ginther struggled with multiple sclerosis. Bisek is now wife No. 3. In a recent interview with Esquire magazine, Ginther said that when Gingrich first confessed to the affair, he asked her to “just tolerate it.” When she refused, he asked for a divorce. But, in a case of history repeating itself, Ginther explains, “He'd already asked her to marry him before he asked me for a divorce. Before he even asked.”

Suzanne Craig

The scandal goes down as one of Washington’s oddest: In June 2007, Idaho senator Larry Craig was arrested after he allegedly solicited an undercover cop for sexual activity in an airport men’s room. Craig claimed he was innocent, then pleaded guilty, and then said he regretted his guilty plea. But during all of the mayhem facing this conservative politician (who has a record of supporting anti-gay legislation), his wife Suzanne Craig stood by his side. At a press conference in which Craig told the crowd, “I am not gay,” Suzanne walked in hand-in-hand with her husband — and she later told Matt Lauer in a special NBC interview, "I honestly believe my husband has been faithful to me, in every way." But that doesn’t mean the media attention wasn’t tough, and that she didn’t question her husband’s sexuality. "I did a lot of soul-searching, and asked myself if I missed something somewhere," she said during the interview. "I thought, ‘Am I just out there somehow being naive?’” The couple is still together today.

Donna Hanover

"If there's going to be a divorce, let's have the truth about why — Rudy Giuliani's open and notorious adultery," said Donna Hanover’s lawyer during her bitter divorce from the former New York City mayor in 2002. After 16 years of marriage, Giuliani and Hanover (a former anchorwoman and actress) started to grow apart in front of the public’s eyes. In fact, he began fulfilling his mayoral duties with another woman by his side, Judith Nathan, whom he called “a very good friend” at the time and who is now his wife. Though the couple’s very public split was anything but friendly, Hanover has found a second chance at love, too — with her high-school sweetheart Ed Oster. When the couple appeared on Oprah’s “Extreme Love Stories” episode a few years later, he said "It's a blessing that we have the opportunity to learn a lot of life's lessons and make mistakes in the past and learn from those, because this is forever.”

Carlita Kilpatrick

Former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick doesn’t exactly have a clean political slate: His time in the mayoral mansion was tainted by a number of scandals, for which he ultimately served time in jail. Among the political corruption was a personal one too: a saucy sexting scandal between Kilpatrick and his chief of staff Christine Beatty. Worse, their messages also showed that the two used city funds to pay for their romantic getaways. Kwame’s wife Carlita Kilpatrick has stuck with him, but she confessed during an interview with a psychiatrist (which was released in court) that the media’s involvement in her marital problems hasn’t made it easy: “It has prevented any healing or reconciliation — the entire process of what women go through when they have unfaithful husbands. I have never been able to express anger or grief because we have had to band together to fight what has happened.”

Nick Chenoweth

Male politicos aren’t the only ones who stray — in fact, Helen Chenoweth, the first Republican woman to represent Idaho in the U.S. Congress, got caught up in a sex scandal of her own. Chenoweth’s infidelity was well hidden until 1998, when she ran a TV ad calling for President Clinton to resign after his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Only then did it come out that Chenoweth once had a six-year fling with a man other than her husband, Nick Chenoweth. She defended herself by saying that she was a private citizen at the time and that "I've asked for God's forgiveness, and I've received it." Helen Chenoweth died in a car accident in 2006.