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Nancy Reagan Biography

U.S. First Lady

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Name at birth: Anne Francis Robbins

Nancy Reagan was First Lady of the United States during the two presidential terms of her husband, Ronald Reagan. Under the stage name of Nancy Davis she made a handful of movies in Hollywood before she met Reagan, who had been a popular actor for a decade. On 4 March 1952 they were married. It was Nancy's first marriage; Reagan had previously been married to the actress Jane Wyman. In 1957 the Reagans appeared together in Hellcats of the Navy, a World War II submarine drama in which they were paired romantically on-screen. In 1958 she gave up her acting career in order to raise a family and to support her husband's political ambitions. He was elected U.S. president in 1980 and she became First Lady from 1981-89. In that role she is best remembered for her fight against narcotics abuse, centered around her advice to "Just Say No" to drugs. The Reagans had two children: Patti (b. 1952, later known as Patti Davis) and Ronald (b. 1958). Nancy Reagan devoted her later years to caring for her husband, who was afflicted with Alzheimer's disease from 1994 until his death in 2004.

Extra credit: The First Lady was at the center of a minor scandal in 1997, when former Reagan staffer Donald Regan revealed that Nancy had frequently sought advice from an astrologer and sometimes changed the president's schedule accordingly... Nancy Reagan graduated from Smith College in 1943... Her memoirs, titled My Turn, were published in 1989... Her parents divorced when she was an infant, and she took the last name of her new stepfather, Loyal Davis... Nancy Reagan also has two stepchildren from Ronald Reagan's marriage to Jane Wyman: Maureen Reagan (1941-2001) and Michael Reagan (b. 1945).

Other 20th-century First Ladies include Laura Bush, Hillary Clinton and Barbara Bush.

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