Marco Rubio proposed to his then-girlfriend, Jeanette Dousdebes, in 1997, at the top of the Empire State Building. After she said yes, he asked for the engagement ring right back, concerned that it might slip off her finger and fall on the way down. Only once the couple got to ground level did he return it. Jeanette entrusts her possessions to Marco to this day. “I just love that she makes her husband hold her phone,” one Washingtonian says.
Unlike many of the wives and girlfriends of the Trump administration, Jeanette Rubio has not created an exaggerated version of herself online. “Wife of Secretary Marco Rubio,” her Instagram bio reads. It links to marcorubio.com, which contains a picture of Marco and the words “Thank you!” Even in high heels, Jeanette stands several inches shorter than Marco, who is 5’9”, making him appear taller. In public, she presents herself as the Secretary of State’s wife – no more, no less.
‘Jeanette models the other, more traditional option given to wives… to be an extension of her husband’
In a Politico article from 2012, one of very few interviews Jeanette has done, she is described as a “behind-the-scenes booster married to her high-school sweetheart who has never given a speech and bristles when the media reduces her life to a brief stint as a Miami Dolphins cheerleader.” Jeanette has also worked as a bank teller and a screener of nonprofit groups seeking donations from Miami-based auto dealer and billionaire Norman Braman. Braman is a long-time financial supporter and advisor to Marco. Jeanette was paid $54,000 a year.
She used her husband’s political status and her job at Braman’s foundation to bring attention to the Lotus House, a women’s shelter in Miami. In 2020, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis appointed her to the statewide council on human trafficking because of her activism against the trafficking of girls. “Anyone who gets to know her will see a smart, funny and kind friend. But Jeanette is also the one who brings spiritual maturity and a joyful perspective to the situation,” says former acting director of national intelligence Richard Grenell. Some traditional conservatives are nostalgic for the version of Republican politics that the Rubios represent. Here is the pro-capitalist Cuban American who graduated from the University of Florida and rose (almost) to the top. Here is a woman who hosts Bible studies at their house, travels with Marco when he goes away for work and acts as a moral guide. “Surround yourself with people that will tell you that you are a fool and that you are acting like a fool,” Marco said once. “Jeanette does that a lot, by the way.”
Marco is handsome and wise-looking, a reminder of what’s left of Ronald Reagan’s legacy. Joan Didion once described Nancy Reagan pretending to cut flowers in her California garden, but Pretty Nancy was an actress, and Jeanette is not. She was born to Colombian immigrants and has four sisters and two brothers. By the time she was 18, her mother had been divorced twice. She grew up craving a stable life.
Shortly after marrying Marco, she became pregnant and dropped out of college in Miami, where she studied fashion. The Rubios have four kids. Jeanette has, in the past, shared a picture online of her oldest daughter with the caption “Children are the flowers in God’s garden.”
Marco has said his political career stood in the way of his wife’s desire for stability and wrote that she once said, “It feels like you’re cheating on me” – his mistress being politics. However, Jeanette encouraged him not to drop out of the Senate race in 2010. “There were times that he said, ‘I don’t want to do this,’ and I just encouraged him,” she told Politico.
In July, a blurry photograph showed Jeanette watching the World Cup final – and for a brief moment, the internet thought she was Melania Trump. Like the First Lady, Jeanette spends most of her time away from Washington, in her hometown of Miami. The comparison is striking because Donald Trump sometimes gives the impression he may one day change his mind and make Rubio, rather than J.D. Vance, his successor. The wives, as always, will play a role in deciding who gets the crown.
“Usha Vance has made it clear that she desires to exist as a whole person, in partnership alongside J.D.’s whole person,” says Grace Weinstein, the writer of Who Broke It, a newsletter analyzing online political influence. “Jeanette, to me, models the other, more traditional option given to wives of Republican officeholders – to be an extension of her husband.” Jeanette has described herself as “shy” and uncomfortable in the spotlight. You get the sense that the scrutiny that comes with being First Lady of the United States would run contrary to her private nature.
Yet with Jeanette’s smiley, warm beauty, it is as easy to picture her on the South Lawn as it is to imagine her at a country club in South Florida asking after donors’ children. Around DC, the primary thing people have to say about Jeanette is that she seems “kind of fabulous.” She is, in many ways, the archetype of an American president’s spouse: demure, beautiful and egoless, present on the world stage out of duty alone.
Comments