Jenny Sanford

Sanford met her future husband, Mark Sanford, at a beach party in the Hamptons on Long Island.[2] She later talked about the meeting in an interview with The Post and Courier: "It wasn’t exactly love at first sight. It was more like friendship at first sight."[2] The couple married in 1989[2] and had four sons.[5]

It was not until the couple's second son was born that Mark Sanford announced his entry into politics.[2] She later told The Greenville News, "It was quite a surprise to me. When he told me, I was in the hospital, and we had just delivered our second son. So we had a 15-month-old and a newborn, and he says to me, ‘I’m going to run for Congress.’"[2]

In 1994, she managed her husband's successful campaign for the United States House of Representatives, as well as his successful campaign for Governor of South Carolina in 2002.[2]

Sanford also acted as her husband's advisor while he was in Congress.[2] According to the Governor's website, she assisted him daily during his first term as Governor, and co-managed his successful re-election campaign in 2006. In 2005, she launched the Healthy South Carolina Challenge, an initiative to reduce the incidence of chronic preventable disease. She serves on the boards of several non-profits, including the Hollings Cancer Center, the Drayton Hall historical property in Charleston, the Coastal Community Foundation and the Children’s Hospital Advisory Fund.

On June 24, 2009, after having been absent from South Carolina for several days, her husband admitted to an affair with a woman from Argentina identified in multiple press reports as María Belén Chapur.[6] Sanford learned of her husband's infidelity in January 2009, before the scandal broke. Following her husband's public disclosure of the affair, she issued a statement indicating that the couple had agreed to a trial separation two weeks prior to his public confession.

On August 7, 2009, she moved out of the South Carolina Governor's Mansion with the couple's four sons and returned to the family home on Sullivan's Island.[7] On December 11, 2009, she announced that she was filing for divorce.[8] The Sanfords' divorce was finalized on March 19, 2010. She published a memoir, Staying True, which was released on February 5, 2010, which details her experience of her husband's affair and the effect it had on her own life.

On February 3, 2013, Sanford found Mark Sanford leaving her Sullivan's Island house. Under the terms of their divorce agreement, Mark was not allowed to visit Jenny's house without her permission. She filed a trespassing complaint against him the next day, alleging that Mark Sanford had repeatedly violated the agreement despite Jenny Sanford filing a "no trespass" letter with the Sullivan's Island Police Department.[9] In a statement, Mark Sanford admitted that he had gone to the house to watch the second half of Super Bowl XLVII with his son. He claimed to have tried to contact Jenny beforehand, but was unable to do so. The disclosure of the trespassing complaint prompted the National Republican Congressional Committee to pull all support from his congressional campaign.[10]

Sanford married Andy McKay, an investment banker from Louisville, Kentucky in 2018.[11]