Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter mark 77th wedding anniversary at home in Plains, Georgia

ATLANTA (AP) — Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are marking their 77th wedding anniversary with a quiet Friday (July 7, 2023) at their south Georgia home, extending their record as the longest-married first couple ever as both face significant health challenges. The 39th president is 98 and has been in home hospice care since February. The former first lady is 95 and has dementia. The Carter family hasn’t offered details of their conditions but has said they both have enjoyed time with each other and a stream of family members, along with occasional visits from close friends, in recent months. Their grandson Jason Carter said it’s been gratifying for the Carters and their family to see the recent outpouring as well-wishers consider their legacies in government and global humanitarian work.

ATLANTA (AP) — Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are marking their 77th wedding anniversary with a quiet Friday (July 7, 2023) at their south Georgia home, extending their record as the longest-married first couple ever as both nonagenarians face significant health challenges.

The 39th president is 98 and has been in home hospice care since February. The former first lady is 95 and has dementia. The Carter family has not offered details of either Jimmy or Rosalynn Carter’s condition but has said they both have enjoyed time with each other and a stream of family members, along with occasional visits from close friends, in recent months.

“As we have looked back at their legacy, it has been really wonderful to see the outpouring of support and respect and love,” grandson Jason Carter said recently. “That word love is really the one that defines certainly their personal relationship, but also the way they approach this world.”

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter have been on the American and international stage together for a half-century. What they described as “full partnership” began years earlier in the Carter family farm business before his political career and their decades of global humanitarian work since leaving the White House in 1981 and establishing The Carter Center the following year.

Through the center, Jimmy Carter conducted multiple diplomatic missions, working with the blessings of his Oval Office successors, even as he sometimes rankled them. The former president and center employees have monitored at least 114 elections across Asia, Africa and the Americas since 1989. They have recently turned their efforts to U.S. elections.

Among their public health outreach, the center’s Guinea worm eradication program has nearly conquered the water-born parasite once prevalent in the developing world. Known cases measured in the millions in the mid-1980s when Jimmy Carter set a goal of eradicating Guinea worm disease. There were fewer than two dozen cases in 2022 and, as of earlier this spring, the center had yet to document a case in 2023.

Rosalynn Carter, meanwhile, took her signature policy issue — mental health treatment and advocacy — beyond the White House and established an annual fellowship for journalists to concentrate on mental health reporting. She also advocated widely for better services for caregivers, a focus the Carter family highlighted earlier this year when they announced the former first lady had dementia.

Beyond the Carter Center, the couple became the most famous volunteers for Habitat for Humanity, the international outfit that builds, repairs and renovates homes for low-income people. The Carters first volunteered for Habitat in 1984, taking a bus from Georgia to the New York City worksite along with other volunteers. They would soon begin hosting annual builds bearing the former president’s name, donning hardhats with volunteers into their late 80s and early 90s.

“Everything they’ve done is really just an extension of what they started and who they were in the White House,” said Donna Brazile, a former Democratic Party chairwoman who got her start in politics on Carter’s presidential campaigns. “Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter are just good, decent people.”

The Carters married July 7, 1946, in their hometown of Plains. But their relationship extends to the cradle.

Jimmy Carter’s parents were friends of Rosalynn’s parents. The future president’s mother was the nurse who delivered Eleanor Rosalynn Smith at the Smith family home in 1927. “Miss Lillian” returned to the Smith home a few days later with her eldest son, preschooler Jimmy, to meet the new baby. The Carters moved to a farm in nearby Archery, just outside of Plains, not long after, though the Carter children and Smith children would continue to see each other at school in Plains.

Rosalynn would become a close friend of Jimmy’s sister Ruth, who played the part of matchmaker during one of her elder brother’s visits back home from the U.S. Naval Academy. Jimmy and Rosalynn married soon after he graduated. They left Plains with no intention of returning other than as visitors. But in 1953, James Earl Carter Sr. died, leaving behind the family’s farming and warehouse enterprise. Without consulting Rosalynn, the young lieutenant decided to leave the Navy and move his young family back to Georgia.

The future president, who became an advocate for women’s rights and nominated more women and non-white people to federal posts than any of his predecessors, later called it inconceivable that he did not consult his wife. Yet over the ensuing years, Rosalynn Carter became a key partner in the family business.

“I knew more on paper about the business than he did. He would take my advice about things,” she told The Associated Press in a joint interview with her husband ahead of their 75th anniversary in 2021.

That continued in politics, as Rosalynn Carter proved herself a skillful campaigner and forceful policy advocate in her own right, overcoming her youthful shyness that the former president has depicted in his writing and painting.

“My wife is much more political,” he said in the interview.

Beyond their longevity, both Carters credit their long marriage to open communication and their shared Christian faith.

“Every day there needs to be reconciliation,” the former president said in 2021. “We don’t go to sleep with some remaining differences between us.”

The pair also have enjoyed hobbies together for years — sometimes even competitively. Before they became frail, they enjoyed playing tennis, hiking and cycling together. Both prolific writers, they sometimes raced to finish drafts of books. Fishing often involved competition, too, and they continued to fish into their 90s on their property in Plains. They added bird watching in recent decades as they slowed down physically.

For all their common joys, Rosalynn Carter added another component of a successful marriage. “Each should have some space,” she said. “That’s really important.”

FEBRUARY 20, 2023:

ATLANTA (AP) — Well-wishes and fond remembrances for former President Jimmy Carter were pouring in a day after he entered hospice care at his home in Georgia. Among those paying homage Sunday (Feb. 19, 2023) was his niece, who noted the legacy of the 39th president at the small Baptist church in Plains, Georgia, where Carter taught Sunday school for decades. Kim Fuller says she doesn’t know who will continue his legacy. In Atlanta, people arrived at The Carter Center to reflect on Carter’s life. James Culbertson drove his sons an hour to pay their respects. He also wanted to teach them “a little bit about how great a humanitarian he was, especially in the later stages of his life.”

ATLANTA (AP) — Dozens of well-wishers made the pilgrimage Sunday to The Carter Center in Atlanta, as prayers and memories of former President Jimmy Carter’s legacy were offered up at his small Baptist church in Plains, Georgia, a day after he entered hospice care.

Among those paying homage was his niece, who noted the 39th president’s years of service in an emotional address at Maranatha Baptist Church, where Carter taught Sunday school for decades.

“I just want to read one of Uncle Jimmy’s quotes,” Kim Fuller said during the Sunday school morning service, adding: “Oh, this is going to be really hard.”

She referenced this quote from Carter: “I have one life and one chance to make it count for something. I’m free to choose that something. … My faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I can, whenever I can, for as long as I can.”

“Maybe if we think about it, maybe it’s time to pass the baton,” Fuller said before leading those gathered in prayer. “Who picks it up, I have no clue. I don’t know. Because this baton’s going to be a really big one.”

Carter, at age 98 the longest-lived American president, had a recent series of short hospital stays. The Carter Center said in a statement Saturday that he has now “decided to spend his remaining time at home with his family and receive hospice care instead of additional medical intervention.”

In Atlanta, people, some traveling many miles, made the trip to The Carter Center to reflect on the life of the former president on a spring-like Sunday under a sunny sky.

“I brought my sons down here today to pay respect for President Carter and teach them a little bit about how great a humanitarian he was, especially in the later stages of his life,” said James Culbertson, who drove an hour to Atlanta from Calhoun, Georgia.

The presidential library was closed in honor of President’s Day weekend, but people were still showing up to walk past the fountains and through the gardens.

David Brummett of Frederick County, Maryland, said he changed his Sunday morning plans when he heard news that Carter was in hospice care.

Brummett paused near a large statue of Carter, where someone had placed a potted plant of purple chrysanthemums at the base.

“Great man, great president, probably under-appreciated by those who didn’t know much about him,” Brummett said. “People should come here to appreciate the life, and the contributions he made both during his presidency and after.”

Margaret Seitter of Atlanta met Carter in the 1980s, when he spoke about foreign relations in one of her classes at Emory University. Seitter and her friend, Larry Goeser, visiting from Florida, were among those paying their respects at The Carter Center.

Both said they were inspired by Carter’s work with Habitat for Humanity, which he continued by helping to build houses well into his later life.

“Definitely want to go build a Habitat for Humanity house in his honor,” Seitter said.

Following Fuller’s Sunday school service at Maranatha Baptist Church, Pastor Hugh Deloach offered prayers for the Carter family, particularly for Rosalynn Carter, the wife of the former president.

The Carters have been married for more than 75 years, making American history as the longest-married presidential couple.

“Lord, especially Mrs. Carter, and God look back on times and years that they’ve been together and Lord just strengthen her in the power of your might as well,” the pastor said.

Others took to social media to remember Carter, who served one term after defeating President Gerald Ford in 1976.

President Joe Biden tweeted: “To our friends Jimmy and Rosalynn and to their family — Jill and I are with you in prayer and send you our love.”

“We admire you for the strength and humility you have shown in difficult times. May you continue your journey with grace and dignity, and God grant you peace,” Biden wrote.

U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Georgia Democrat, also took to Twitter to pay homage to Carter: “Across life’s seasons, President Jimmy Carter, a man of great faith, has walked with God. In this tender time of transitioning, God is surely walking with him.”

“May he, Rosalynn & the entire Carter family be comforted with that peace and surrounded by our love & prayers,” Warnock wrote.

The Carters volunteered for decades with Habitat for Humanity, beginning in 1984 and continuing until 2020.

“All of us at Habitat for Humanity are lifting up President and Mrs. Carter in prayer as he enters hospice care,” Habitat for Humanity International CEO Jonathan Reckford said in a statement.

“We pray for his comfort and for their peace, and that the Carter family experiences the joy of their relationships with each other and with God in this time,” Reckford said.

Nicholas Kristof, a New York Times columnist, tweeted: “Prize winners and truly impressive people. Few are as truly good as Jimmy Carter, who at age 98 is now entering hospice. He leaves this planet so much better than he found it. A great, great, great man.”

Carter was a little-known Georgia governor when he began his bid for the presidency ahead of the 1976 election. He went on to defeat Ford, capitalizing as a Washington outsider in the wake of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal that drove Richard Nixon from office in 1974.

Carter served a single, tumultuous term and was defeated by Republican Ronald Reagan in 1980, a landslide loss that ultimately paved the way for his decades of global advocacy for democracy, public health and human rights via The Carter Center.

The former president and his wife, Rosalynn, 95, opened the center in 1982. His work there garnered a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002.