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Getbig Female Info Boards => Open Talk for Girl Discussion => Topic started by: BayGBM on September 18, 2008, 10:12:30 AM
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ELIZABETH EDWARDS SPEAKS OUT ABOUT AFFAIR
ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 16, 2008
DETROIT -- The wife of former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards said in her first interview since her husband's extramarital affair was made public that the situation is "an ongoing process of finding your feet again."
"There's a lot of adjustment to make," Elizabeth Edwards told the Detroit Free Press for a story published Thursday. "When you mention trust, that's probably the most difficult hurdle."
The interview came more than a month after her husband acknowledged that he repeatedly lied about having an affair in 2006.
Elizabeth Edwards, 59, had been quiet about the affair, only discussing it in a brief statement last month in which she pleaded for privacy and said her husband confessed the affair to her in 2006.
Edwards, who is being treated for breast cancer, spoke to the newspaper ahead of a visit to Detroit next month to talk about coping with life's setbacks, including the loss of her teenage son in an auto accident and her 2004 cancer diagnosis.
She also said she wants her children - Cate, 26, Emma Claire, 10, and Jack, 8 - to have an image of their father as "an advocate for poverty, not for this current picture of him to be the only one they carry with them, as young people and as adults."
"I have to prepare for the possibility if I die before they are grown," she said, of helping them "function without an involved, engaged and admiring parent. So I need to create the picture for them that I want them to have."
John Edwards has canceled all of his public events until after the election, saying in a statement through his publicist he doesn't want to be a distraction to his party's ticket.
He said in early August that he had an affair with a woman hired to produce videos of him doing advocacy work as he laid the groundwork for a presidential campaign.
http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=178123
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Bay I am curious
Why are you so interested in men cheating on woman ???
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E Edwards seems to be taking the high road. Good for her and her children.
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The ugly rumor was that he was planning on his wife dying so he could turn around and marry his mistress. But Elizabeth screwed up his plans by living. >:(
Did any of you see his interview on Nightline? The slime was practically dripping off of him. Does anyone actually believe he is not the father of Rielle Hunter's baby? Or that he did not funnel money to her? This woman of modest means has a baby then suddenly picks up and moves to Santa Barbara renting a multi million dollar house... ::)
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The ugly rumor was that he was planning on his wife dying so he could turn around and marry his mistress. But Elizabeth screwed up his plans by living. >:(
Did any of you see his interview on Nightline? The slime was practically dripping off of him. Does anyone actually believe he is not the father of Rielle Hunter's baby?
why would he deny something that can be proven very easily with a dna test
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why would he deny something that can be proven very easily with a dna test
Because the very day after he denied fathering the child and said he would take a paternity test, Hunter said in an interview that she would never allow paternity test on the child. Sounds like she was paid off to me. I think Edwards is a terrible liar. Even after the affair has come out, he is still lying. >:(
My heart goes out to Elizabeth and her kids. They deserve better than this public humiliation.
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I've never been a fan of the former senator either...obviously what I am going to mention isn't nearly as serious as cheating on his ill wife...but it still showed me that the former senator was full of ****
Back when he was running for vice president (04) he got to talking about going to get his wife a Frostee from Wendy's. But he said it like, "...and sometimes I'll go out and get her a uh...what's it called...a Frostee ??" She dutifully nodded and smiled. Like he was just so far "above it all" that he didn't know for sure what to call a product everyone knows about and he apparently purchased himself with some regularity.
I don't know why this bothered me so much, but there is my .02 on the subject of Jonathan Reid Edwards.
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Comeon let's be honest guys..........his wife has always been an old ugly hag. Yeah the dude is a dickhead and asshole for cheating but you know what...........she should have done more to make herself attractive. She was probably a cold rag in bed as well. This guy is a rich lawyer who can get any piece of ass he wants. Life is reality not a fairy tale. The best sex you ever have is when you are cheating.......atleast that's what they say.
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Comeon let's be honest guys..........his wife has always been an old ugly hag. Yeah the dude is a dickhead and asshole for cheating but you know what...........she should have done more to make herself attractive. She was probably a cold rag in bed as well. This guy is a rich lawyer who can get any piece of ass he wants. Life is reality not a fairy tale. The best sex you ever have is when you are cheating.......atleast that's what they say.
A conversation with a friend of mine last weekend got me thinking about this. What is a normal man supposed to do when his wife “lets herself go” and/or does not want to be intimate with any regularity? Is he supposed to go without sex? Watch porn? Ask his wife’s permission to have an affair?
I’m not trying revisit the Edwards affair but following a conversation with my friend the other day, it occurred to me that the pattern of behavior is not that uncommon. When one throws in the fact that a man is rich and reasonably good looking he is going to get offers and opportunities for sex.
I’m not saying men are forced to cheat or that it is the wife’s fault, but ladies what do you really expect a normal man (as opposed to a saint) to do if you are not providing him with sex?
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I’m not saying men are forced to cheat or that it is the wife’s fault, but ladies what do you really expect a normal man (as opposed to a saint) to do if you are not providing him with sex?
If she has some physical limitation etc. making intercourse impossible there are alternative actions she can take.
If she is not providing him w/anything, she may need counseling, or perhaps they need marriage counseling.
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John Edwards Admits Paternity
By JEFF ZELENY
John Edwards, who twice sought the Democratic presidential nomination, admitted in a statement on Thursday that he is the father of Frances Quinn Hunter, the 2-year-old daughter of his former mistress, Rielle Hunter.
Mr. Edwards had vehemently denied the accusations – first reported nearly two years ago by The National Enquirer – but he made the not-so-surprising announcement before a tell-all book by a former aide makes the same disclosure next month.
“It was wrong for me ever to deny she was my daughter, and hopefully one day, when she understands, she will forgive me,” Mr. Edwards said in a statement released to The News & Observer in Raleigh, N.C., and to NBC’s “Today” show.
“I will do everything in my power to provide her with the love and support she deserves,” Mr. Edwards added. “I have been able to spend time with her during the past year and trust that future efforts to show her the love and affection she deserves can be done privately and in peace.”
A book to be released next month by Andrew Young, a longtime aide to Mr. Edwards, is set to lay out the entire story. Mr. Young had previously claimed to be the father of the young girl of Ms. Hunter’s, who was a filmmaker on the Edwards presidential campaign.
The brief statement from Mr. Edwards was intended to get ahead of the book.
“To all those I have disappointed and hurt,” Mr. Edwards said in his statement, “these words will never be enough, but I am truly sorry.”
So does this close the book on this long-running, sordid story? Yes, one former aide to Mr. Edwards said Thursday, noting that if he had been honest from the beginning – or at other points along the way – this disclosure would have never been necessary and it would have been over long ago.
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lying cheating bastard
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“It was wrong for me ever to deny she was my daughter, and hopefully one day, when she understands, she will forgive me,”
When she understands what ???
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Bay I am curious
Why are you so interested in men cheating on woman ???
He appreciates irony. Americans will literally fight to the death protecting traditional marriage yet stuff like this happens all the time. :)
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I’m not saying men are forced to cheat or that it is the wife’s fault, but ladies what do you really expect a normal man (as opposed to a saint) to do if you are not providing him with sex?
If she has some physical limitation etc. making intercourse impossible there are alternative actions she can take.
If she is not providing him w/anything, she may need counseling, or perhaps they need marriage counseling.
You both crack me up.
When a woman is dying of cancer, in a fight for her life, ...her husband getting his rocks off is the last thing she is,
...or for that matter, should be concerned about. What is he supposed to do? Who cares?! He's a big boy, I'm sure he'll think of something. Y'all make it seems like he's never jerked off before, ...or possibly doesn't know how. I hardly think he's gonna forget how to do something he's probably been doing since the age of 12.
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You both crack me up.
When a woman is dying of cancer, in a fight for her life, ...her husband getting his rocks off is the last thing she is,
...or for that matter, should be concerned about. What is he supposed to do? Who cares?! He's a big boy, I'm sure he'll think of something. Y'all make it seems like he's never jerked off before, ...or possibly doesn't know how. I hardly think he's gonna forget how to do something he's probably been doing since the age of 12.
Masturbation isn't an adequate substitution for sex, Judi.
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Can John Edwards' Dreadful Image Be Rehabilitated?
By BELINDA LUSCOMBE
There's unpopular, there's widely loathed, there's despised, and then there's John Edwards. Americans are a tolerant people, but they have a line, and evidently, when you cheat on your cancer-stricken wife, lie about it to everyone while running for president, and then decline to acknowledge fathering a love child for two years, you've crossed it. Given the towering stack of strikes against him, can Edwards resume any kind of public life? Short of curing his wife's cancer, is there anything he could do to get people to at least tolerate him?
According to a recent poll, the former presidential candidate is now historically disfavored. After taking the opinions of 678 North Carolina Voters, Public Policy Polling announced on Jan. 19 that with a 15% approval rate, Edwards was the most unpopular person it had ever polled - and this is from the state that gave us Jesse Helms. Another poll named him the most disappointing person of 2009. Yes, Edwards has come a long way from those blissful days when all most people hated him for was his $400 haircuts.
Image consultants and PR managers, who are professionally optimistic, say it's possible for him to rehabilitate his public image, but not easy. First up, he has to come totally clean and he has to do so in front of a camera. On Jan. 21, just shy of Quinn Hunter's second birthday, Edwards issued a statement that finally copped to him being her father. "It was wrong for me ever to deny she was my daughter and hopefully one day, when she understands, she will forgive me," the press release said. Nuh-uh. For a doozy like that, you have to front up personally, say the experts. "I can't emphasize enough - the tone of voice is the most important element," says Mike Sitrick of the PR firm Sitrick and Company. "This is an art, not a science."
Sitrick also believes the former Senator needs to recruit the missus, Elizabeth Edwards. "If she said 'He breached the most important thing we had which is trust, and I'm hurt beyond words, but I believe in him,' she'd get Mother Theresa status and it would help him with his biggest problem, which is the credibility,'' says Sitrick. This could be a tough ask, however, since two new books, one of which is by Edwards' former aide, Andrew Young, a.k.a. the guy who originally claimed to be Quinn's dad, cast both Edwardses in a bad light, and Elizabeth may not want to put herself out there to face uncomfortable questions... http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20100123/us_time/08599195624500
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Elizabeth Edwards has "called it quits" for her marriage, and her husband John, the scandal-scarred erstwhile presidential hopeful, has moved out of their home, People magazine reports in a new cover story.
People cites named sources close to the couple, including Elizabeth's sister: "She said, 'I've had it. I can't do this. I want my life back," Nancy Anania told the magazine. "I hear peace in her voice that I haven't heard in a long time."
The magazine says that the separation pre-dates the former senator's confession last week that he is indeed the father of campaign videographer Rielle Hunter's baby. Elizabeth, 60, is still living in their Chapel Hill, N.C. mansion, while John, 56, splits his time between an annex on the property and their beach home 160 miles away. The magazine also says that Elizabeth, who is still battling cancer, has had divorce papers at the ready for a year, but whether she files will likely depend on her health.
The magazine also describes Elizabeth meeting with Hunter's baby, 23-month-old Frances Quinn Hunter; and quotes John's parents, Wallace and Bobbie Edwards, on how they've welcomed the child into their life.
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John Edwards' mistress wants return of 'private' tape
January 29, 2010 | 9:17 am
HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. — The mistress of former presidential candidate John Edwards wants a “very private and personal” videotape back from a former aide who wrote a book about the politician, according to court documents obtained today by the Associated Press.
Rielle Hunter was granted a temporary restraining order against former Edwards aide Andrew Young in a North Carolina court. It seeks the return of photos and videos, including one she says she made in 2006 while working as a campaign videographer for Edwards.
“In or about September 2006, using my video camera, I authored a personal video recording that depicted matters of a very private and personal nature,” Hunter wrote in an affidavit filed Thursday. “In 2006, I was also having an intimate relationship with Edwards.”
“The decision was made that the video be destroyed” in December 2006, Hunter wrote. She said she pulled out the tape from the cassette and stored it in a box with personal belongings.
In his book that came out this week, Young describes viewing a sex tape that showed Edwards and a woman he assumed was Hunter. Young says some videotapes were inside a “box of trash” that Hunter left behind at a home he rented for her. He says the tape had been pulled out but that he was able to fix it.
Deputies in Orange County said in court documents filed today that they went to Young's home to try and recover the tapes and personal photographs of Hunter. After some discussion, Young's attorney told authorities that he could not immediately turn over the tape.
Along with winning the restraining order, Hunter has filed a lawsuit against Young and his wife, seeking a jury trial and damages for invasion of privacy. Young's attorney did not immediately return a call seeking comment.
Edwards only recently admitted paternity of Hunter's daughter, who is now nearly 2. He and his wife, Elizabeth, are now separated.
-- Associated Press
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>:(
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Oprah Winfrey grills Rielle Hunter about her affair with John Edwards
By Lisa de Moraes
Rielle Hunter, Queen of Denial, went on Oprah Winfrey's talk show Thursday to talk about Johnny Edwards's "life of integrity."
"This whole journey has been so hard for me. I am a really private person," explained the woman whose affair with Edwards polished off his political career.
"I am very much a person committed to truth," she informed Oprah, sitting pretty in the living room of her three-bedroom home in Charlotte.
Right off the bat, in what was her first TV interview, Rielle wanted to make it abundantly clear that she is not a home-wrecker because "it is not my experience that a third party wrecks a home."
"You can't steal someone else's husband, you can't steal someone's wife -- it's not property," she explained.
Other people's perception of her as, say, a home-wrecker "definitely hurts a lot," she said.
She is perceived negatively, she said "because a lot of people bought into the myth of the marriage . . . the Edwards marriage as being a storybook story and it was so perfect and so wonderful and I destroyed it. It fits into their two-dimensional story line."
Rielle walked Oprah through the salient, succulent facts thusly: The unsuspecting professional videographer first encountered Edwards in February 2006, at which time he "practically jumped into my arms."
Actually, they spotted each other across a crowded public room in the Regency hotel in Manhattan, and there was "mutual staring going on," but nothing more.
She did not realize who the former Democratic vice presidential candidate was because, she explained blondely, "I didn't pay a lot of attention to the Kerry-Edwards campaign -- I had a lot going on in my life at that time."
When she left the hotel, he sidled up to her. "He was just so excited -- just lit up like a Christmas tree -- white lights just as bright as can be. And I just turned to him and said, 'You're so hot.' "
At that point she said to him, in her retelling: "I can help you." His acquiescence: "I want your help. I need your help."
"Help him do what?" asked Oprah, speaking for us all.
"See his authentic self. Be more his authentic self so people could see who he really was," Rielle offered.
"And how were you planning on doing that?" asked Oprah.
"I had no plans. None at all," she responded.
So Rielle rang him up at the hotel and wound up in his hotel room that very night, where they chatted about this and that, including how "he wanted to be more authentic, he wanted to live a life of truth. He wanted to change his life," she said.
He changed his life, all right.
Two days after he made his candidacy official, his wife, Elizabeth, discovered the affair when she found a cellphone Rielle had bought for Edwards -- it looked exactly like his work phone, in order to deceive people. Elizabeth called the number on the phone and Rielle answered, "Hey, baby!"
Rielle insisted she did think about Edwards's wife and his three children while conducting her affair with Edwards.
"I mean, it was very hard -- very, very hard," Rielle said, in re herself.
After Rielle had explained to Oprah about a gajillion times that she was a person who was deeply committed to the truth and being authentic, Oprah was finally driven to ask: "So you are a person who is on a spiritual path. You've mentioned truth here several times. What part of you could make that okay, then, to be with this married man with children?"
"Because he was available," Rielle said simply.
Rielle described Edwards as being "in extreme conflict" about running for president but "addicted to campaigning." She said Edwards caved in to pressure from his staff members. "Their paychecks and all of their livelihoods depended on him announcing -- and Elizabeth wanted him to," Rielle said.
In July 2007, Edwards and his wife renewed their wedding vows, even though he knew he had a bun in someone else's oven, by Rielle's account. They had never used birth control, she explained.
Rielle acknowledged that she thought it was a bad thing for Edwards to stand before God and retake vows he knew to be a lie, but she didn't think less of Edwards for having done that because "I understood where he was in his process," Rielle said, as she waggled her pink sandal on her big toe. Oprah, to her credit, did not roll her eyes and throw up her hands.
Though he was "gracious" when he found out she was pregnant, he became "very angry when she was photographed by the National Enquirer, while hiding out at Edwards aide Andrew Young's North Carolina home, Rielle told Oprah. She said Young then brought up the idea to claim he was the baby's father.
"Why did you, Miss Spirituality in Alignment With the Truth . . . go along with it?" Oprah asked -- a great line.
Rielle capitulated, she said, because she did not want her baby girl to grow up blaming herself for having kept Daddy from being president of the United States.
When Edwards told Bob Woodruff on "Nightline" in August 2008 that he had no idea who was the father of Rielle's baby, Rielle was devastated, she recalled. "Elizabeth really wanted him to do that interview," she insisted.
"He was trying to fix what had been broken. . . . He was trying to make his life one of integrity," said the High Priestess of Having It Both Ways. (We were not able to reach Edwards at press time.)
About that sex tape she and Edwards made: Rielle, a videographer by trade, says she thought she had destroyed it when she cut it in half and put it in a box the Youngs claim she left in their home, though she claims that they took it from her.
Oprah, understandably, wondered why she hadn't thought to, you know, burn it, or throw it away.
"That was the first thought now that to comes to me," Rielle answered.
Really, you can't make this stuff up.
She admitted another mental lapse: when she agreed to take off her pants for that GQ interview and -- gosh darn it! -- GQ used more than one photo of her sans pants, clad in a man's shirt, with a come-hither look on her face.
Her rationale for her state of pantslessness: She hated that the only photos the world had seen of her to date in this story were of her looking frumpy and pregnant.
"What I was thinking was," she ventured, "I would like to have one sexy shot where the world can see me as a beautiful woman, as opposed to all those photos that are out there of me looking like some Wicked Witch of the West -- the ugliest thing you could ever imagine."
And finally, poised in fuschia by her North Carolina hearth, receiving child support from Edwards, being interviewed on national TV by Oprah Winfrey, Rielle said she does not regret her tabloid-elevating affair with the married Edwards because "I learned a lot."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/29/AR2010042904639.html?hpid=artslot
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Elizabeth Edwards' illness worsens
Her cancer is no longer being treated and she may live only a few more weeks, according to a family friend. Edwards, 61, is with her family in North Carolina.
Associated Press
Washington — Elizabeth Edwards is gravely ill and doctors have told her she only has a few weeks to live, according to a family friend who is with Edwards at her North Carolina home.
The family issued a statement Monday saying doctors had told Edwards that further treatment for her cancer would be unproductive.
A family friend told the Associated Press that Edwards, 61, was briefly hospitalized and treated last week. The friend spoke on condition of anonymity because of the personal details divulged.
Former presidential candidate John Edwards, her estranged husband, and their three children were with her at her Chapel Hill home, the friend said. Her sister, brother, nieces, nephews and others also were there. The friend said Edwards remained in good spirits and was not in pain.
Edwards, a popular figure among Democrats as she campaigned with her husband in two presidential bids, posted on her Facebook page a message of love and gratitude to those who had supported and inspired her.
"The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered," she wrote.
Edwards separated from her husband early this year after he admitted to having an extramarital affair and fathering a child with his mistress, Rielle Hunter. Edwards was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2004, in the final days of her husband's campaign as the Democratic vice presidential nominee.
The John F. Kerry-John Edwards ticket lost to incumbent President George W. Bush. John Edwards launched a second bid for the White House in 2007.
The couple decided to continue the campaign after doctors told Elizabeth Edwards that her cancer had spread, but he lost the nomination to Barack Obama.
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Elizabeth Edwards' illness worsens
Her cancer is no longer being treated and she may live only a few more weeks, according to a family friend. Edwards, 61, is with her family in North Carolina.
That's too bad :(
She was just recently on the Nate Berkus show (appeared to be filmed around Sept.) showing off her home and her decorating style.
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Very sad :(
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:(
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epic eternally pointing out divorces to justify the guilt of .......
ummm were we married at some point and then decided we were gay....mommey issues?
ummmm do the kids u have with previous said wifey have a strained relationship with you?
i'm just throwing darts... ;)
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Elizabeth Edwards Dies of Cancer at 61
By ROBERT D. McFADDEN
Elizabeth Edwards, who as the wife of former Senator John Edwards gave America an intimate look at a candidate’s marriage by sharing his quest for the 2008 presidential nomination as she struggled with incurable cancer and, secretly, with his infidelity, died Tuesday at her home in Chapel Hill, N.C. She was 61.
Her family confirmed the death. A family friend said Mrs. Edwards was surrounded by family and friends when she died shortly after 10:15 a.m. On Monday, two family friends said that her cancer had spread to her liver and that doctors had advised against further medical treatment.
Mrs. Edwards posted a Facebook message to friends on Monday, saying, “I have been sustained throughout my life by three saving graces — my family, my friends, and a faith in the power of resilience and hope.” She added: “The days of our lives, for all of us, are numbered. We know that.”
In a life of idyllic successes and crushing reverses, Mrs. Edwards was an accomplished lawyer, the mother of four children and the wife of a wealthy, handsome senator with sights on the White House. But their 16-year-old son was killed in a car crash, cancer struck her at age 55, the political dreams died and, within months, her husband admitted to having had an extramarital affair with a campaign videographer.
The scandal over the affair faded after his disclosure in 2008. But in 2009, Mrs. Edwards resurrected it in a new book and interviews and television appearances, telling how her husband had misrepresented the infidelity to her, rocked their marriage and spurned her advice to abandon his run for the presidency, a decision in which she ultimately acquiesced.
Last January, on the eve of new disclosures in a book by a former political aide, Mr. Edwards admitted he had fathered a child with the campaign videographer. Soon afterward, he and Mrs. Edwards separated legally.
Mrs. Edwards, a savvy political adviser who took on major roles in her husband’s two campaigns for the White House, learned she had a breast tumor the size of a half-dollar on Election Day 2004, when the Democratic ticket — Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts and Mr. Edwards, his running mate from North Carolina — lost to President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.
Radiation and chemotherapy appeared to put the cancer into remission. In a best-selling memoir, “Saving Graces: Finding Solace and Strength from Friends and Strangers” (Broadway Books, 2006), Mrs. Edwards chronicled her fight for survival. But in March 2007, with her husband again chasing a presidential nomination, this time against Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mr. and Mrs. Edwards disclosed that her cancer had returned.
They said it was malignant and in an advanced stage, having spread beyond the breast and lymph nodes into her ribs, hip bones and lungs. It was treatable but “no longer curable,” Mr. Edwards explained. But he said he would continue his bid for the presidency, and Mrs. Edwards said that she, too, would go on with the campaign. “I don’t expect my life to be significantly different,” she declared.
Mrs. Edwards had always been a dominant figure in her husband’s political life. Often called his closest adviser and surrogate, she reviewed his television advertisements and major speeches, helped pick his lieutenants, joined internal debates over tactics and strategy, and sometimes dressed down, or even forced out, campaign aides she thought had failed her husband.
A scathing portrait of Mrs. Edwards’s political role, based mainly on unnamed sources, was presented in “Game Change,” a book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin published last January. “The nearly universal assessment” among campaign aides, they wrote, “was that there was no one on the national stage for whom the disparity between public image and private reality was vaster or more disturbing.”
Mrs. Edwards’s advanced cancer made her a riveting figure, at times overshadowing the candidate himself. In 2007, she was often mobbed by crowds that saw her as courageous. Inevitably, there were questions about putting their marriage on display. People wondered about their values, or whether they were in denial about the cancer. Some accused them of cynically using her illness for political gain.
But Mr. and Mrs. Edwards were undeterred. While she took a yellow chemotherapy pill once a day, her stamina seemed high, she often carried her own bags and put in 16-hour days, and she showed no signs of the disease: her hair was full, her skin color was robust, and she bustled with energy.
Political consultants said American voters yearned for authenticity and character in a candidate, and thought Mr. Edwards had a singular opportunity. But his aides worried, with some justification, that Mrs. Edwards on a podium was too compelling for his good. At a luncheon in Cleveland, some comments from the audience sounded like paeans to her.
“I came to feel the inspiration you exude,” said a woman bald from months of chemotherapy and radiation. Another cancer patient called Mrs. Edwards “my angel, my idol, my everything.”
Mr. Edwards pitched himself as a populist, up from hardscrabble mill towns to success as lawyer. He stuck to a script of living wages, cuts in greenhouse gases and a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, with health care as a signature issue.
But many voters were alienated by his 2002 vote for the Iraq war. Falling behind Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton in polls, he lost the primary in South Carolina, where he was born, and quit the race in late January 2008. He later endorsed Mr. Obama.
Any lingering hopes for his political future were shattered in August 2008, when he admitted to ABC News that he had had an affair in 2006 with Rielle Hunter, a 42-year-old woman hired to make campaign videos. He denied being the father of her infant daughter, even offering to take a paternity test, and insisted that the affair had occurred when his wife’s cancer was in remission and that it was over before he announced his presidential campaign on Dec. 28, 2006. He also said he had not given hush money to Ms. Hunter, although his campaign had paid her $114,000 for videos.
Mrs. Edwards at the time issued a statement supporting her husband. “Although John believes he should stand alone and take the consequences of his action now,” she said, “when the door closes behind him, he has his family waiting for him.”
But in May 2009, she raised the matter again in interviews and television appearances, including “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” and in a second memoir, “Resilience: Reflections on the Burdens and Gifts of Facing Life’s Adversities” (Broadway Books, 2009).
In the book, she related his admission of infidelity. By his account, she wrote, “on only one night had he violated his vows to me.” She grew ill and angry and later tried to make herself believe it had lasted only one night. “It turned out that a single time was not all it was,” she said.
She said that she had urged him to end his campaign, “to protect our family from this woman, from his act,” but that he had refused, and she ended up supporting him, keeping silent about the affair as the campaign continued for a year and a half.
“Being sick meant a number of things to me,” she told Ms. Winfrey. “One is that my life is going to be less long, and I didn’t want to spend it fighting.”
Asked by Ms. Winfrey whether she still loved him, Mrs. Edwards replied, “You know, that’s a complicated question.”
The couple’s separation, and Mr. Edwards’s admission that he had fathered a child with Ms. Hunter, came on the eve of the publication of “The Politician” (Thomas Dunne Books, 2010), a tell-all book by Andrew Young, a former campaign aide who had originally said that he was the father of the child, who was born in 2007. Mrs. Edwards was born Mary Elizabeth Anania on July 3, 1949, in Jacksonville, Fla., the daughter of Vincent J. and Elizabeth Thweatt Anania. Her father was a Navy pilot, and the family moved often in America and abroad.
She attended Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Va., but transferred to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and earned a bachelor’s degree in English. She enrolled in the university’s law school, where in 1974 she met Mr. Edwards, four years her junior and the son of a textile worker.
After graduating, they were married in July 1977 and began legal careers. In the next two decades, he became a multimillionaire, mostly by winning medical malpractice cases. Her career was low key, in bankruptcy and public service law. Elizabeth preferred her middle name and used her maiden name professionally.
They were not very interested in politics. After the birth of Wade, in 1979, and Catharine, known as Cate, in 1982, they embraced parenthood, he coaching soccer, she joining parent-teacher groups and arranging her work schedules to spend afternoons with the children.
But the storybook family was shattered on April 4, 1996, when Wade, a high school junior, was killed in a car accident driving to the Edwardses’ beach house. Devastated, the parents stopped working. For months, Mrs. Edwards read her son’s textbooks aloud at his grave and spent sleepless nights in online bereavement groups or staring at a weather channel.
Eventually, the couple decided to change their lives. In Wade’s name, they established a foundation, created a computer learning lab at his high school and organized scholarships and essay awards. Elizabeth changed her surname to Edwards, began fertility treatments and had two more children — Emma Claire, in 1998, and John, known as Jack, in 2000.
Mr. Edwards went into politics, ran for the Senate in 1998 and handily defeated Lauch Faircloth, the Republican incumbent. Mr. Edwards did not serve a full six-year term, resigning in 2004 to run for president. He fell short, but Senator Kerry, who won the nomination, picked him to run for vice president.
Mrs. Edwards soon became her husband’s most valued adviser, a role undiminished by her illness. “I trust her more than I trust anybody in the world,” he said a month before abandoning his presidential race. “She’s herself, and fearless. I don’t think she’s intimidated by or afraid of anything.”
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the bright side: this thread can end now