Presidential Museum and Library

In 1954, while the nation’s attention was glued to President Ramon Magsaysay, then Congressman Ferdinand Marcos briefly stole the limelight when he met Imelda Romualdez, Rose of Tacloban—who sometime later would be Mrs. Marcos.

Hartzell Spence, who wrote the Marcos biography, recalls how it happened:

About half an hour before midnight, Ferdinand Marcos, his speech concluded, entered the cafeteria and saw Imelda. He stood motionless for a moment, an action which did not go unnoticed by the canny politicians present, whose eyes miss nothing unusual. Other members of the house now drifted in. Marcos asked to be introduced to the fair stranger.

No one would do the honors between the Golden Voice of the North and the Rose of Tacloban. “I don’t want it on my conscience,” his best friend in the chamber told him. Others were equally adamant; by now Marcos had some reputation as a Lothario…Finally, Representative Jacobo Gonzales of Laguna in Southern Luzon, a friend of the Romualdez family and an old guerilla buddy of Ferdinand, who had a sense of both humor and destiny, stood the honor, and Imelda and Ferdinand met.

“Would you mind standing up?” the Ilocano asked Imelda.

Puzzled, she complied. He stood back to back with her, measured with his hand, verified that he was a half-inch taller than she. (She was in low heels and her hair was not piled high.)

“Fine,” he said. “Everything else is okay.” And turning to Congressman Gonzales he announced, “I’m getting married.”