Cindy McCain: A Profile

WASHINGTON — She was a pretty 24-year-old teacher vacationing with her parents in Hawaii nearly three decades ago when they met at a cocktail party.

"I was standing at the hors d'oeuvre table, young, shy, not knowing anybody," Cindy McCain told Harper's Bazaar. "Suddenly this awfully nice looking Navy captain in dress whites was kind of chasing me around the table. I thought, 'What's going on here?'"

The handsome pursuer was married at the time, although separated from the wife who had waited for the five-and-a-half years that the jet pilot spent in a prisoner of war compound in Hanoi after being shot down over North Vietnam.

There was "instant chemistry" at the 1979 cocktail party, recalled the blonde special education teacher, who was also the heiress to an Arizona fortune.

"She was lovely, intelligent and charming, 17 years my junior but poised and confident," that Navy captain, John McCain, wrote in his book, "Worth Fighting For."

"I monopolized her attention the entire time," he admitted. "When it came time to leave the party, I persuaded her to join me for drinks at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. By the evening's end, I was in love."

Now poised to be the Republican presidential nominee, John McCain faces innuendo about his fidelity to that pretty blonde teacher – who became his wife in 1980. Last week, an article in the New York Times reported that when McCain ran for president eight years ago, some staff members feared he may have had a romantic relationship with another pretty, even younger, blonde woman, lobbyist Vicki Iseman.

McCain strongly denied any wrong doing, and his wife stood beside him.

"My children and I not only trust my husband, but know that he would never do anything to not only disappoint our family, but disappoint the people of America," Cindy McCain told reporters in Toledo, Ohio. "He's a man of great character."

But the story suddenly thrust the Republican candidate's wife into the 2008 campaign spotlight. Before Cindy McCain had mostly stayed in her husband's shadow while attention was focused on the potential Democratic candidate spouses Bill Clinton, husband New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, and Michelle Obama, the wife of Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

A Child of Privilege

Cindy Lou Hensley was born in Phoenix in 1954, the only child of James and Marguerite "Smitty" Hensley. Her father was the founder of Hensley & Company, one of the largest Anheuser-Busch distributorships in the country. She grew up in affluence, vacationing at a beach house on Coronado Island near San Diego and becoming a rodeo beauty queen.

She was a cheerleader at Central High School in Phoenix and a Kappa Alpha Theta at UCLA. She earned undergraduate and masters degrees in special education.

She was teaching children with disabilities at a high school in Avondale, Ariz., when she went to Hawaii with her parents.

A former POW and son of an admiral, John McCain was a naval liaison officer traveling with a congressional delegation in Hawaii. His 14-year marriage was falling apart.

Carol McCain, a former fashion model, had been severely injured when thrown through the windshield in a 1969 car wreck. Her husband was in a POW compound and she did not let him know for fear it would upset him further. The accident "left her four inches shorter and on crutches and she gained a good deal of weight," the New York Times reported.

The couple had three children. She has rarely spoken publicly about the marriage or divorce, but did talk to Robert Timberg for his book, "John McCain: An American Odyssey."

"The break-up of our marriage was not caused by my accident or Vietnam or any of those things. I don't know that it might not have happened if John had never been gone," she said. "I attribute it more to John turning 40 and wanting to be 25 again than I do to anything else."

Carol McCain worked for Nancy Reagan during the 1980 presidential campaign and was later director of the White House Visitors' Center.

Family and Politics

John and Cindy were wed on May 17, 1980, about a month after his divorce was final. When filling out their marriage license applications, they found that both had been lying about their ages – he telling her that he was four younger, she telling him that she was three years older.

After 22 years in the Navy, John resigned and the newlyweds moved to Arizona. McCain went to work for his father-in-law but his political ambitions were plain from the start. In 1982, he was elected to Congress.

Throughout her husband's career in the House and Senate, Cindy McCain has lived in Arizona. As an only child, she wanted a big family and thought Washington, D.C., was not the place to raise their children.

After suffering several miscarriages, she gave birth to Meghan in 1984, John IV, called "Jack," in 1986 and Jimmy in 1988.

With her husband home only on weekends, she was often like a single mom and admits there was stress.

"Did I get angry? Sure, I'm only human," she told Harper's Bazaar. "But at the situation, not him."

Her parents, who have both since died, lived across the street and helped out.

In 1988, Cindy McCain founded the American Voluntary Medical Team, a nonprofit group that organized doctors, nurses and other health care professionals to make emergency trips to Third World countries hit by natural disasters or war.

During a 1991 mission to Bangladesh, she found a baby girl in an orphanage run by Mother Teresa. She decided to bring the girl back to the United States for surgery for her cleft palate. On the return flight, Mrs. McCain tells campaign audiences now, "I decided that I couldn't part with her."

When she came out of the plane holding the little girl, her husband asked, "Where's she going?," Mrs. McCain recalls. "I said, 'To our house' and he replied, 'I thought so.'"

The McCains adopted the girl, naming her Bridget. She would become part of the 2000 presidential campaign when Republicans opposed to McCain's nomination – and allegedly supporting George W. Bush – spread rumors before the South Carolina primary that Bridget was McCain's illegitimate black daughter.

It would be years before Bridget McCain would learn of the incident by Googling her own name.

Her daughter was very upset, recalls her mom, who says she has forgiven the political opponents.

"She wanted to know why President Bush hated her," Cindy McCain told the New York Times. "And I had to explain to her that it wasn't the president that hated her, that no one hates her. It was a very maturing process for her. I had to explain to her how nasty campaigns can be."

Drug Addiction

In 1994, Cindy McCain publicly admitted that she had been addicted to the prescription drugs Percocet and Vicodin. She said she had begun taking the powerful painkillers after two back surgeries for ruptured discs in 1989. And she had stolen drugs from her own American Voluntary Medical Team.

She said her husband didn't know and that she sought help, including a stay in a rehab center, after an intervention by her parents.

"That was the darkest period of my life," she told Harper's Bazaar. "I was in pain, took too many pills, and, like many women, just fell into it."

The admission came after Tom Gosinski, who worked for the American Voluntary Medical Team, had told the Drug Enforcement Agency about the drug thefts. He was subsequently fired.

Solon.com later published a 1992 entry from Gosinski's journal: "In reality, I am working for a very sad, lonely woman whose marriage of convenience to a U.S. senator has driven her to distance herself from friends, cover feelings of despair with drugs and replace lonely moments with self-indulgences."

Cindy McCain's friends see a much different person.

Cindy is strong, said Sharon Harper, a Phoenix businesswoman who described their relationship as "the dearest of friends for 20 years."

"She incorporates a lot of interesting traits that you don't often see in one person. She's strong, disciplined, intelligent yet sensitive and reserved," said Harper, a neighbor who said "our families grew up together."

Mrs. McCain gets a lot accomplished but "never comes across as aggressive," Harper explained. "She's elegant and lovely, yet very hands-on."

Back on the Campaign Trail

On her husband's campaign bus, the Straight Talk Express, Cindy McCain sits in one of eight captain's chairs in the front. Her daughters Meghan – who has a campaign blog – and Bridget often sit nearby. The McCain sons are both in the military — the younger one, Jimmy, is a Marine in Iraq.

The pixie-ish haircut that Mrs. McCain sported on the 2000 campaign has been replaced by long, frosted locks. She often introduces her husband and describes an initial reluctance to run again when her husband brought up the subject.

"I gulped and said 'No.' We did it in 2000," she told an audience in South Carolina. She then tells the two reasons she changed her mind – her sons serving in the military.

"I could not in good conscience not help my husband do this because I really believe he is the only man that is experienced enough for this time and this day and age in the United States of America," she explained.

She has also predicted what sort of first lady she would be.

"I think I perceive myself as just Cindy McCain," she told San Diego Magazine. She said she would continue her volunteer work and not be a co-president.

"I've never been a political person. I would not attend cabinet meetings. I would not be a part of that process. That's my husband's job," she said. "But what I do is just as important. It's just different."

Cox reporter Ken Herman contributed to this report, which also contains material from the Arizona Republic.