These justices maintained a lifelong friendship, despite a rejected marriage offer, author reveals
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. Photos courtesy of the Library of Congress.
Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist said before his death in 2005 that his late wife, Nan, was the only woman he ever loved. But she is not the only woman he ever asked to marry.
Before he began dating Nan Cornell, the woman who would become his wife in 1953, Rehnquist proposed marriage to a Stanford Law School classmate. Her name was Sandra Day, NPR reports.
Justice Sandra Day O’Connor had kept the letter, and it was in correspondence reviewed by an author doing research for a book. The author is Evan Thomas, and the book, First, is scheduled for publication in March 2019.
Rehnquist and Day had shared classroom notes, entered a moot court competition together and dated. Rehnquist graduated before Day and left for a Supreme Court clerkship. She started dating a different classmate, John O’Connor, the man she would later marry.
Rehnquist told Day in a letter that he wanted to talk to her about “important things.” In a later letter, he made his proposal. “To be specific, Sandy, will you marry me this summer?” he wrote.
O’Connor’s son, Jay, told NPR he and his siblings knew their mother had dated Rehnquist, but they were surprised to learn about the proposal. He said O’Connor and Rehnquist remained friends their entire lives. “It was just an amazing accident of history that … my mom and her friend and law school classmate ended up on the Supreme Court together,” he said.
