The woman’s name was Marilyn Jo Jenkins. She was Hillary’s worst nightmare: an attractive, accomplished, rich antagonist with whom Bill believed himself to be in love. He wanted to end his marriage. Hillary refused. She would fight to keep her marriage and her family together, she told Betsey Wright. She had invested too much into her partnership with Bill to abandon it.
Jenkins was about the same age as Hillary, a Southerner, a beauty, a divorced mother of two young children.
She and Bill probably began seeing each other in 1988. Around this time, he was asking some fellow governors whose marriages had deteriorated how they had dealt with the political consequences of divorce. He was clearly suggesting that he might be in a similar situation.
When Wright confronted him on the subject in the spring or early summer of 1989, Bill confirmed he had fallen in love with another woman, but now he wanted to fix his marriage to Hillary. He also confirmed to her, Betsey said, that Hillary had refused to give him a pass out of the marriage. “And that he had thought he was really in love with this woman, but he had also decided he wanted . . . he’d rather save the marriage with Hillary.”
And we all know how well that worked out... as they say, the rest is history.