Jane Hadley Barkley

She was born in Keytesville, Missouri; her father was a lawyer and her mother a pianist who had studied in Europe. She married her first husband, Carleton Hadley, a lawyer, in 1931. Hadley, whom she met at Washington University in St. Louis, became a prominent railroad attorney. They had two daughters before his death in 1944 at 42.

Carleton Sturdavant Hadley (Dec. 23, 1902 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - Feb. 16, 1945 St. Louis, Missouri) came from the prominent Philadelphia Hadley Family. He earned a B.A. from Brown University in 1923, a L.LM from the University of Pennsylvania in 1927, and a M.A. from Washington University in 1929. He married Barkley in 1931, and had two children. He was a revered attorney nationally and a prominent member of the St. Louis Republican Party, and died from a heart attack aged 42 in his St. Louis Mansion on February 16, 1945. His uncle was the President of Yale University, Arthur Twining Hadley.

She married Vice President Alben Barkley, a widower, on November 18, 1949. She was his second wife, and he was her second husband.[1][2] At the time of marriage Barkley was 33 years her senior. He was 71 and she was 38. Barkley's first wife, Dorothy, had died in 1947. Until her courtship with Barkley, Jane Rucker Hadley had been a devoted Republican. In 1940, Mrs. Hadley was working in the St. Louis office of GOP presidential nominee Wendell Willkie. When her milkman expressed fondness for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, she left a note saying, "No Willkie, no milkie".

Jane Barkley (far left), next to Alben Barkley

After meeting the young widow in May 1949 at a party in Washington, the Vice President courted her ardently. He was not deterred by her politics or a long-distance relationship. The Vice President began making regular commercial airline stops in St. Louis. Their courtship captured national attention. She resided in a seven-room apartment in St. Louis's prestigious Central West End neighborhood, near both Washington University and the renowned Forest Park. She additionally owned a country estate in nearby St. Charles County. On October 30, 1949, they announced their engagement.

They married at St. John's Methodist Church in St. Louis on November 18. The ceremony was attended by 33 family members and one vice presidential aide, along with about 60 reporters. Outside, an estimated 5,000 people cheered the couple as they departed in a black convertible the groom gave as a wedding gift.[3] When asked about his wife's politics, the vice president said, "She got swept off her feet by Willkie, but now she's back in the fold."

Her husband retired from the Vice Presidency in January 1953. He was elected for another term in the U.S. Senate in 1954, serving until his death in 1956.

After Barkley's death, Jane Barkley accepted a position as a secretary at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Mrs. Barkley published a memoir in 1958 with New York's Vanguard Press, entitled I Married the Veep. At the time of her death in 1964 from a heart attack, she was still employed at George Washington University.[4]