Correct me if I'm wrong but I remember reading or watching something like the History Channel and Jane Wyman was the one that divorced Reagan in late 40s or early 50s. Reagan had to learn about the divorce in the newspaper, which hurt him. Maybe that's why his love for Nancy was so strong. She rebuilt trust back in him. Apparently, Wyman flew east to do a movie and announced it to the press without speaking to him. Reagan's acting career wasn't that good but hers was blossoming. What I found interesting was that her career was dead until Reagan won the presidency. Then she surfaced and had her own tv series which stayed on until he left the presidency. Then her tv series went off the air thus ending a tv career that was never any good in the first place. Never watched it myself but read about it in the tv guide. Always wondered if H'weirdo and the press were trying something to discredit him in some way.
In early 1981, after starring in box-office movies for 49 years, she won the role of the conniving matriarch, Angela Channing Erikson Stavros Agretti, in the movie, "The Vintage Years", which was the unaired pilot for the soap opera, "Falcon Crest" (1981), later in the year. For 9 seasons, she formed that character in a way that no other actress could have done and she was drawn as the moral center of the show. In its very 1st season in 1981, it was a ratings winner and her co-stars _Robert Foxworth_ , _Lorenzo Lamas_ , _Abby Dalton_ , and _Susan Sullivan_ , really impressed her work. Near the end of its 1st season, and according to the storyline, she was told that her evil TV son, _David Selby_ had just inherited 50% of a California newspaper company, which led to even bigger ratings for the next 5 years. She was nominated six times for a Soap Opera Digest Award; and in 1984; she won the Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a TV Series Drama. During the eighth season of "Falcon Crest" (1981), Wyman was emotionally ill; she also had the friction of working on the set, which made it look very exhausted, but wanted to keep on working, anyways. After the 8th season, and after the first two episodes of the 9th season, her health was in jeopardy, which (in real-life) led to her departure on the 9th and final season of FC, as her character suffocates before going into a hospital and slips in a coma, she stood away from the show for almsost the entire season, but came back to make the best of that bad job and decided (against her doctor's advice) to finish the last 3 episodes of the series. She then guest-starred as Jane Seymour's mother on "Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman" and 3 years later, she appeared in Wild Bill: Hollywood Maverick (1996). In the late 1990s, she purchased a home in Rancho Mirage, California, where she's still living in retirement. Her daughter, Maureen (who died in August 2001), was a writer who also involved herself in political issues and organized a powerful foundation.
"Reagan had to learn about the divorce in the newspaper, which hurt him."
When he was asked in an interview if that hurt him he said what really hurt was not that someone didn't love him, but that he had lost someone to love.