How long did Jill Biden's first marriage last?
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Executive summary
Jill Biden’s first marriage — to Bill (William) Stevenson — lasted roughly five years: the couple married in 1970 and were divorced by 1975, a timeline reported by multiple mainstream outlets [1] [2]. Some accounts place their separation in 1974 and legal proceedings around 1975, producing the commonly cited “about five years” duration [3] [4].
1. The bare timeline: marriage in 1970, ended by 1975
Public biographical reporting consistently places Jill Biden’s first wedding in 1970 while she was a college student and records the marriage’s end in the mid-1970s; Reuters summarizes the conventional timeline as “from 1970 to 1975,” which equates to roughly five years [2]. Profiles in People and long-form biographical outlets echo that basic span, noting that the marriage occurred during her University of Delaware years and did not survive into the latter half of the decade [1] [4].
2. Why the “five years” figure is the standard summary
Contemporary and retrospective reporting compresses the chronology into a neat five-year figure because sources cite 1970 as the start and 1975 as the end — the simplest arithmetic yields “five years.” Reuters used those calendar endpoints in its fact check of viral claims about the Bidens’ early relationship, and lifestyle outlets repeat the same dates, reinforcing the widely accepted duration in mainstream coverage [2] [4].
3. Small discrepancies in reporting and what they mean
Not all pieces speak in exact day-and-month terms: some reports describe a separation in 1974 with divorce proceedings concluding later, which creates a slight variance between “separated in 1974” and “marriage ended in 1975” narratives [3] [5]. These differences do not materially challenge the consensus that the union lasted on the order of half a decade, but they do underscore that reporting often leans on year markers rather than court records or exact dates [3].
4. Context offered by first-person and archival sources
Jill Biden herself and official timelines about her life emphasize that she was young, in college, and focused on work and independence when that marriage dissolved, and biographers have used that context to explain why she later spoke about the divorce as formative [1] [6]. Institutional biographies and encyclopedic entries further anchor her later relationship with Joe Biden to the mid-1970s timeline, noting that she met Joe after her first marriage ended and married him in 1977 — details that indirectly corroborate the timing of the earlier divorce [7] [8].
5. Alternative accounts and contested details
There are more contentious or colorized accounts — for example, recollections from Bill Stevenson and other contemporaries have produced disputed stories about how relationships overlapped or ended, and tabloid-style outlets have published sharper narratives about alleged affairs and acrimony [3] [5]. Mainstream fact-checking and authoritative biographical sources, however, stick to the 1970–1975 timeline and caution against speculative reconstructions that lack corroborated evidence [2] [7].
6. How confidently this question can be answered from available reporting
Given the convergence of multiple reputable sources on a 1970 marriage and a mid-1970s breakup, the answer can be stated with high confidence in everyday terms: Jill Biden’s first marriage lasted about five years [2] [1]. Still, reporting tends to use years rather than full legal documents, so if the precise day count or exact divorce decree date is required, those would need to be confirmed through primary legal records or direct archival documentation, which are not presented in the available sources [4] [3].