Was Marco Rubio's wife Jeanette Dousdebes a Miami Dolphins cheerleader? A look inside the couple's 'romcom' love
Senator Marco Rubio, went after infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci on Twitter on Sunday, December 27, saying "Dr Fauci lied about masks in March. Dr Fauci has been distorting the level of vaccination needed for herd immunity. It isn’t just him many in elite bubbles believe the American public doesn’t know 'what’s good for them' so they need to be tricked into 'doing the right thing'." Here's all about Marco Rubio and his love life.
Marco Rubio's life
Born on May 28, 1971, in Miami, Florida, Marco Antonio Rubio, was elected as a Republican to the US Senate in 2010 and began his term representing Florida the following year. He sought his party’s nomination in the US presidential election of 2016.
Marco's parents had moved to the United States from their native Cuba in 1956 during the Fulgencio Batista dictatorship. The family initially lived in Miami but later relocated to Las Vegas, where his father worked as a bartender and his mother was a hotel housekeeper. In 1985, the Rubios returned to Florida. Marco married Jeanette Dousdebes in 1998 and they have four children. Marco graduated from the University of Florida in 1993 and he studied law at the University of Miami. During that time, he worked for Ileana Ros-Lehtinen a Republican who was the first Hispanic woman elected to the US House of Representatives. After getting a law degree in 1996, he served a term as a member of the West Miami City Commission before being elected to the Florida House of Representatives in a special election in 1999. He served from 2000 to 2008, during which time he was majority leader (2003–06) and speaker (2006–08).
In 2009, Marco stated that he was running for the US Senate position, which was left vacant by the resignation of Mel Martinez. In 2010, he won the general election by a large margin in a three-way race. After taking office in 2011, Marco adopted a generally conservative stance, and he was considered one of the leaders of the Tea Party movement. In keeping with most Republicans, he opposed gun control, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), same-sex marriage, climate-change curbs, and other efforts backed by the Democratic Party. However, he broke with many in his party by helping draft immigration legislation (2013) that offered a pathway to citizenship for those illegally in the United States who met certain conditions.
Who is Jeanette Dousdebes?
Jeanette Dousdebes was born in Florida, to parents who had emigrated from Colombia. She went to South Miami High School and met her future husband, Marco Rubio, at a neighborhood party when she was 17 and he was 19. After graduating from high school, she attended Miami Dade College and after that she started working as a bank teller. In 1997, she became a member of the Miami Dolphins Cheerleaders and got featured in the Miami Dolphins Cheerleaders' first swimsuit calendar. It was during her time as a cheerleader that Jeanette Dousdebes and Marco Rubio, who were only slightly acquainted in high school, met again and began to date. When the couple got married, she dedicated herself to her husband and their four kids.
The teenage love story
Marco and Jeanette met when they were attending high school, down the road from where they live today in West Miami. The future senator won over his wife with more than his charm and sense of humor. "Marco was different," Dousdebes was quoted as saying by ABC. "He had a depth about him that for me, that's I think what struck me about him." After dating each other for seven years, Marco finally popped the question, as soon as Jeanette as soon as he finished law school, on a trip to New York City. He proposed to her at the top of the Empire State Building because of her favorite movie. "At the time I did enjoy ['Sleepless in Seattle,'" she said. "And so he decided, 'Let me, you be creative,' and so he tried to put something that I liked at the time, and incorporate it in." The couple now has four children, named, Amanda, Daniella, Anthony and Dominic.
In 1996, when Marco was asked to help oversee the South Florida operations of Bob Dole’s presidential campaign, Jeanette bluntly confronted him about the long hours and constant travel. “It feels like you’re cheating on me,” she told him. (His mistress, he wrote: politics.) Looking back, Rubio's wife wasn't certain her husband would ever run for president. "He talked about it, but it's one of those things that people talk about, you know when they're young," She said. "We never thought it was going to come true."
Rubio, who played football briefly in college, is a Miami Dolphins fanatic, according to Dousdebes, who was briefly the cheerleader for the team before getting engaged to Rubio. While the Rubios take faith--and Sundays--seriously, Dolphins games are also closely observed. "You can ask the neighborhood about that," Dousdebes told former White House Communication Director, George Stephanopoulos.
“She has been a big force for good in his life,” said Nelson Diaz, a former aide to Mr Rubio in the Florida Legislature who remains close to the couple. “She has helped make Marco who he is.”