| Jenny Sanford | |
|---|---|
| First Lady of South Carolina | |
| In office January 15, 2003 – February 26, 2010 |
|
| Preceded by | Rachel Hodges |
| Succeeded by | Vacant |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 11 September 1962 Winnetka, Illinois |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse(s) | Mark Sanford (1989-2010) (divorced) |
| Children | Marshall Sanford Landon Sanford Bolton Sanford Blake Sanford |
| Residence | Sullivan's Island, South Carolina |
| Alma mater | Georgetown University |
Jennifer Sullivan Sanford (b. 11 September 1962[1]) is the former First Lady of South Carolina, heiress, and former investment banker.[2] She was married to Governor Mark Sanford, whose initial campaigns she substantially funded. On December 11, 2009, she announced that she was filing for divorce, after it became known that Governor Sanford had flown to Argentina to have an affair with Maria Belen Chapur, a 43-year old divorced mother from Buenos Aires. The divorce decree was granted on February 26, 2010. The couple's divorce was finalized on March 19, 2010.[3]
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Sanford was born and raised in Winnetka, Illinois, an upscale suburb of Chicago.[2] She is the second of five children born to an Irish Catholic family.[2] Sanford's family was prominent in the area. Her great-grandfather, Joseph W. Sullivan, co-founded Skil Corporation which manufactured the first portable electric saw.[2] Her uncle and another grandfather, both lawyers, headed the Winston and Strawn law firm.[2] Sanford also has familial ties to Rushton Skakel, the brother of Ethel Kennedy.[2]
Sanford attended Woodlands Academy, an all-girls Catholic school in Lake Forest, Illinois.[2] She graduated magna cum laude, earning her bachelor's degree from Georgetown University in 1984.[2]
From 1984 until 1990, she worked at Lazard Freres & Company, an investment bank based in New York City,[2] eventually becoming a vice president in the firm's mergers and acquisitions group. It was while she was working at Lazard that she met her future husband, Mark Sanford, at a beach party in the Hamptons on Long Island.[2] She later talked about the meeting in an interview with The Post and Courier, "It wasn’t exactly love at first sight. It was more like friendship at first sight."[2]
The couple married 1989,[2] and eventually had four sons, Marshall, Landon, Bolton, and Blake.
It was not until the couple's second son was born that Mark Sanford announced he would enter politics.[2] She would later tell the The Greenville News, "It was quite a surprise to me. When he told me, I was in the hospital, and we had just delivered our second son. So we had a 15-month-old and a newborn, and he says to me, ‘I’m going to run for Congress.’"[2]
In 1994, she managed her husband's successful campaign for the United States House of Representatives, as well as his successful gubernatorial campaign in 2002.[2]
Sanford also acted as her husband's advisor while he was in Congress.[2] According to the Governor's website, she assisted him daily during his first term as Governor, and co-managed his successful re-election campaign in 2006. In 2005, she launched the Healthy South Carolina Challenge, an initiative to reduce the incidence of chronic preventable disease. She serves on the boards of several non-profits, including the Hollings Cancer Center, the Drayton Hall historical property in Charleston, the Coastal Community Foundation and the Children’s Hospital Advisory Fund.
On June 24, 2009, after having been absent from South Carolina for several days, her husband admitted to an affair with a woman from Argentina identified in multiple press reports as María Belén Chapur.[4] Sanford learned of her husband's infidelity in January 2009, before the scandal broke. Following her husband's public disclosure of the affair, she issued a statement indicating that the couple had agreed to a trial separation two weeks prior to his public confession.
On August 7, 2009, she moved out of the South Carolina Governor's Mansion with the couple's four sons and returned to the family home on Sullivan's Island.[5] On December 11, she announced that she was filing for divorce.[6]
Jenny Sanford released her book, Staying True, on February 5, 2010. She details her experience of her husband's affair and the effect it had on her own life.
The Sanfords' divorce was finalized on March 19, 2010.