Joe and Jill Biden have been married for 43 years — here’s a timeline of their relationship

• Joe Biden had to propose to Jill five times before she said yes.
• They have each written memoirs where they share the history of their love story.
• They have been at each other’s sides during celebrations, such as the inauguration in 2009 and 2013, and devastating losses, such as the death of their son Beau.
• Jill has become a key member of Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign.

It took some convincing for Jill Taylor Jacobs to agree to marry Joe Biden.

“Joe often tells people that I didn’t agree to marry him until the fifth time he asked me,” she said in a speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. “The truth is, I loved him from the start.”

Through their 43 years together, Joe and Dr. Jill Biden have been at each other’s sides through successes and failures, through joyful celebrations and devastating losses.

Keep scrolling for a complete timeline of their relationship.

1975: Joe Biden’s brother introduced him to Jill Taylor Jacobs.

Joe was a 33-year-old US senator, and Jill was a 24-year-old college senior. Both had been married before. Joe’s wife and daughter died in a car crash in 1972, leaving him a widower with two sons, and Jill and her husband filed for divorce in her junior year.

“I was a senior, and I had been dating guys in jeans and clogs and T-shirts, he came to the door and he had a sport coat and loafers, and I thought, ‘God, this is never going to work, not in a million years,'” Jill Biden told Vogue. “He was nine years older than I am! But we went out to see ‘A Man and a Woman’ at the movie theater in Philadelphia, and we really hit it off. When we came home … he shook my hand good night … I went upstairs and called my mother at 1:00 a.m. and said, ‘Mom, I finally met a gentleman.'”

June 17, 1977: The couple married after Joe proposed five times.

“I said, ‘Not yet. Not yet. Not yet,'” Jill told Vogue of Joe’s proposals. “Because by that time, of course, I had fallen in love with the boys, and I really felt that this marriage had to work. Because they had lost their mom, and I couldn’t have them lose another mother. So I had to be 100 percent sure.”