Pat Nixon - Marriage and Family

Marriage and Family

While in Whittier, Pat Ryan met a young lawyer fresh out of Duke University law school, Richard Milhous Nixon. The two became acquainted at a Little Theater group when they were cast together in The Dark Tower. Known as Dick, he asked Pat Ryan to marry him the first night they went out. "I thought he was nuts or something!" she recalled. He courted the redhead he called his "wild Irish Gypsy" for two years, even driving her to and from her dates with other men. Eventually they married at the Mission Inn in Riverside, California on June 21, 1940. She said that she had been attracted to the young Nixon because he "was going places, he was vital and ambitious ... he was always doing things". Later, referring to Richard Nixon, she said, "Oh but you just don’t realize how much fun he is! He’s just so much fun!" While Richard Nixon served in the Navy during World War II, Pat worked as a government economist living in San Francisco.

Veteran UPI reporter Helen Thomas suggested that in public, the Nixons "moved through life ritualistically", but privately, however, they were "very close". In private, Richard Nixon was described as being "unabashedly sentimental", often praising Pat for her work, remembering anniversaries and surprising her with frequent gifts. During state dinners, he ordered the protocol changed so that Pat could be served first. Pat, in turn, felt that her husband was vulnerable and sought to protect him. Of his critics, she said that "Lincoln had worse critics. He was big enough not to let it bother him. That's the way my husband is."