A Partnership, Over Five Decades

    The photo is unremarkable at first glance. Two young people dressed in early 1970s fashion—she with big glasses and natural hair, he with what his future wife would later call a “Viking beard”—stand together outside Yale Law School in 1972. They look like any other student in New Haven, Connecticut, two faces in a crowd of aspiring lawyers trying to make their way in the world.

But this was no ordinary couple

    The woman was Hillary Rodham, a brilliant Wellesley College graduate who was the first female student in the college’s history to give her commencement address. She spent the summer after college working on a fishing boat in Alaska, cleaning salmon to earn money. She was fierce, independent, and unafraid to challenge expectations.

    The man was Bill Clinton, a charismatic Rhodes Scholar from Arkansas with an encyclopedic memory and an uncanny ability to connect with people. He had already decided that he wanted to return home to serve his state, even though everyone told him he could do anything, go anywhere.

    They had met a year earlier, in the spring of 1971, in the most unusual way. Bill had immediately noticed Hillary in their politics and civil rights class. She had, as he would later describe her, “thick blond hair, big glasses, no makeup, and a sense of strength and confidence that I found magnetic.” For days he kept seeing her around campus, but he couldn’t bring himself to talk to her. He would follow her outside of class, get close enough to tap her on the shoulder to introduce himself, but then lose his nerve.

And then, one night, everything changed

    He was in the Yale Law School library, talking to a fellow student who was trying to get him to work for the Yale Law Journal. The position would have guaranteed him a prestigious job or a federal clerkship. But Bill wasn’t interested—he just wanted to get back to Arkansas. Then he saw her again, standing at the far end of the long hall.

    This time she was looking back at him. Hillary closed her book, stood up, and walked the length of the library toward him. When she reached him, she looked him straight in the eye and said, “If you keep looking at me and I keep looking back at you, maybe we can meet. I’m Hillary Rodham. Who are you?”

    Bill Clinton, famous for his eloquence even in his youth, was speechless. When he finally mumbled his name, Hillary simply smiled and walked away. But this bold performance marked the beginning of a partnership that would last more than five decades.

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