Bill Clinton's Story About Proposing To Hillary Probably Isn't True

At the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night, Bill Clinton told a story that he’s been telling for the past few years. When he and Hillary Rodham were young and in love, he said, he was trying to get her to marry him. But before he convinced her, he said, he tried to convince her not to marry him, and instead to run for political office in New York or Chicago.

It’s a nice story, which is why the former president repeated it Tuesday. But until recently, Bill Clinton told a very different version of the story. He’s always said he had to ask Hillary several times to marry him before she finally said yes. The story about him trying to convince Hillary not to marry him, however, is a new addition. It’s probably not true. When New York Magazine’s Rebecca Traister asked Hillary Clinton about it earlier this year, the former secretary of state said as much:

“I don’t think he said that when he actually proposed,” she told me with a smile when I brought up this version of the story. “But it was kind of a theme that he would go back to.”