When did Jill Biden marry her first husband?
1. The basic fact: who and when
Public reporting consistently identifies Jill Biden’s first husband as Bill (William) Stevenson and gives 1970 as the year they married, a detail noted in profiles and contemporaneous accounts that describe the union as occurring while she was in college [1][2].
2. Immediate context: a college marriage
Multiple profiles emphasize that the marriage happened during Jill Jacobs’s undergraduate years at the University of Delaware, with coverage saying she “married Bill in 1970, while she was in college,” underlining youth and expectations that later shaped her reflections on the relationship [2][1].
3. How long it lasted: separation and dissolution
Reporting places the end of that marriage in the mid‑1970s: articles and fact checks say Jill separated from Stevenson in the fall of 1974 and that the marriage was over by 1975, which is also the year cited for her divorce in several outlets [3][4][5].
4. Why the early dates matter in the larger Biden narrative
Journalistic timelines about Jill and Joe Biden’s relationship repeatedly note these dates because they establish that Jill’s first marriage predated her meeting Joe Biden; reporters cite her college marriage and subsequent separation to explain that her first date with Joe Biden occurred later, in March 1975 [5][3]. Encyclopedic and timeline pieces that chronicle Jill’s life and the Bidens’ courtship place Joe and Jill’s marriage to each other in 1977, which is a separate event from Jill’s 1970 marriage to Stevenson [6][7].
5. Disputed recollections and why some timelines diverge
There are contested memories from people connected to those years: Bill Stevenson gave interviews asserting different versions of when he and Jill knew Joe Biden and when relationships overlapped, while Jill Biden and campaign accounts maintain the standard timeline of a separation in 1974 followed by a first date with Joe Biden in 1975 [3][4]. Fact‑checking outlets and multiple contemporary profiles treat the core dates—marriage to Stevenson in 1970, separation in 1974, and divorce by 1975—as the best‑documented sequence, while acknowledging that personal recollections can vary [5][1].
6. What reporting can and cannot confirm
Available mainstream sources confirm the 1970 marriage to Bill Stevenson and the mid‑1970s end of that marriage, and they place Jill’s meeting Joe Biden and later marrying him in separate, later steps [2][1][6]. When it comes to contested anecdotal claims about exact months, who was present at particular events, or private motivations, the reporting notes disputes but cannot definitively adjudicate private memories without additional documentary evidence beyond the cited interviews and contemporaneous reporting [3][4].
7. Bottom line
The direct answer is that Jill Biden married her first husband, Bill Stevenson, in 1970 while a college student; that marriage dissolved in the mid‑1970s, with separation reported in 1974 and divorce around 1975 [1][2][3][4]. The details of personal recollections vary among sources, but the 1970 wedding year is the consistent factual anchor in public accounts [1][2].