To hear Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his wife Jill tell their story, they met on a blind date in 1975 when they were both single, fell in love shortly thereafter, and have lived happily ever after ever since.
Yet, that doesn’t square with the recollections of Bill Stevenson, Jill Biden’s first husband, who recounted that he and Jill first met Joe Biden in 1972 and also claims that Joe and Jill engaged in an affair which led to the end of his marriage, the Washington Examiner reported.
Ex-husband tells all
Stevenson’s tale of an alleged affair between his then-wife Jill and then-Sen. Biden (D-DE) is documented in an autobiography he is set to release soon that purportedly tells his entire life story, the vast majority of which doesn’t involve the Bidens.
He shared his version of events in a recent exclusive interview with the Daily Mail and made clear that “I don’t want to hurt anyone.” However, “facts are facts and what happened, happened.”
“I genuinely don’t want to harm Jill’s chances of becoming first lady. She would make an excellent first lady — but this is my story,” he said, and noted, “It’s not a bitter book — I’m not bitter because, if it wasn’t for my divorce, I would never have met my wife Linda and she’s the greatest thing in my life — but it does have facts in it that aren’t pleasant to Jill and Joe.”
Affair suspected
Those facts include Stevenson’s marriage to Jill in 1970 and their 1972 work on then-councilman Joe Biden’s first Senate campaign. Biden at that time was married to his first wife Neilia, who unfortunately perished in a car accident with their young daughter after the election but prior to Biden being sworn into office as a senator.
Less than two years later in 1974, Stevenson began to have suspicions about his wife’s infidelity, recalling an incident in which she passed up an opportunity to go meet Bruce Springsteen in New Jersey — Stevenson owned and operated a popular live music venue in Wilmington, Delaware — to instead babysit Biden’s two sons, Beau and Hunter.
“Then one of her best friends told me she thought Joe and Jill were getting a little too close. I was surprised that she came to me,” he said. His suspicions were later confirmed when another friend informed him that he had been involved in a fender bender with a brown Corvette that was owned by Jill — and was being driven by Sen. Biden at the time of the incident.
“I asked Jill to leave the house, which she did. Her father was begging me to take her back when he found out what was going on. He asked me to give her a second chance, but I wasn’t interested,” Stevenson said. “I considered Joe a friend. I’m not surprised he fell in love with Jill. Everyone who meets Jill falls in love with her immediately. It’s hard not to.”
What’s the truth?
The Daily Mail noted that Stevenson’s story conflicts with the stories long told by the Bidens, of which there are even variations of the details between their individual versions.
One iteration of their meeting story involved Joe seeing a picture of Jill in 1975, finding out who she was through a mutual friend, and then asking her out on a date. Yet, there is also another version that has the pair meeting for a blind date sight unseen, with the senator later marveling over the “drop-dead gorgeous” woman he’d met for the date.
There is probably no way to know for sure whether the Bidens’ claim that they did not meet until 1975 or Stevenson’s account of a 1972 first meeting is true, but given the manner in which Biden is known to embellish details from his past, neither would be all that surprising.
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