page_title: Gerald Ford
section_title: Marriage and children
hierarchical_section_title: Gerald Ford / Marriage and children
caption_attribution_description: English: Gerald R. Ford, Jr., and Betty Ford walk out of Grace Episcopal Church in Grand Rapids, MI, following their marriage on October 15, 1948.
context_page_description: Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr. was an American politician who served as the 38th president of the United States from August 1974 to January 1977. Before his accession to the presidency, Ford served as the 40th vice president of the United States from December 1973 to August 1974. Ford is the only person to have served as both vice president and president without being elected to either office by the Electoral College.
  Born in Omaha, Nebraska, and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Ford attended the University of Michigan and Yale Law School. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve, serving from 1942 to 1946; he left as a lieutenant commander. Ford began his political career in 1949 as the U.S. representative from Michigan's 5th congressional district. He served in this capacity for 25 years, the final nine of them as the House Minority Leader. In December 1973, two months after the resignation of Spiro Agnew, Ford became the first person appointed to the vice presidency under the terms of the 25th Amendment by President Richard Nixon. After the subsequent resignation of President Nixon in August 1974, Ford immediately assumed the presidency.
context_section_description: On October 15, 1948, Ford married Elizabeth Bloomer (1918–2011) at Grace Episcopal Church in Grand Rapids; it was his first and only marriage and her second marriage. She had previously been married and, after a five‐year marriage, divorced from William Warren.
  Originally from Grand Rapids herself, she had lived in New York City for several years, where she worked as a John Robert Powers fashion model and a dancer in the auxiliary troupe of the Martha Graham Dance Company. At the time of their engagement, Ford was campaigning for what would be his first of 13 terms as a member of the United States House of Representatives. The wedding was delayed until shortly before the election because, as The New York Times reported in a 1974 profile of Betty Ford, "Jerry Ford was running for Congress and wasn't sure how voters might feel about his marrying a divorced exdancer."
  The couple had four children:
  Michael Gerald, born in 1950
  John Gardner, known as Jack, born in 1952
  Steven Meigs, born in 1956
  Susan Elizabeth, born in 1957
caption: The Fords on their wedding day, October 15, 1948
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