#grace coolidge

This is such a great question, and I was spending quite a bit of time going over the Presidential marriages while debating myself about the right answer. But it suddenly hit me that the perfect answer is Calvin Coolidge and his wife, Grace Goodhue Coolidge. They were extremely quirky as individuals and, as a couple, there are many unique stories about the Coolidges and their marriage. As I've written on a couple occasions in the past, Calvin Coolidge was a really weird dude (he had a mechanical horse in the White House for exercise and was not above dressing up as or acting like a cowboy when using it!), and Grace was eccentric (she had a pet raccoon named Rebecca in the White House) and very interesting in her own right. Together, they were quite a match.

As William A. DeGregorio wrote in The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, "While watering flowers outside the school [she was working at in Northampton, Massachusetts] one day in 1903, [Grace] happened to look up at the open window of Robert N. Weir's boardinghouse and caught a glimpse of [Calvin] Coolidge, shaving in front of a mirror, with nothing on but long underwear and a hat. She burst out laughing at the sight; he heard the noise and turned to look at her. It was their first meeting."

And as the New York Times reported in a 1935 review of Mrs. Coolidge's biography of President Coolidge:

Soon after Calvin Coolidge was married, he took to his bride fifty-two pairs of socks in need of mending. "When I inquired if their wearer had married me to get his stockings darned, he replied quite seriously, 'No, but I find it mighty handy,'" Mrs. Grace Coolidge writes.

It seems like you could get a lot of comedic mileage out of their relationship. There are, without a doubt, significantly more photos of Grace Coolidge laughing or smiling than all of the First Ladies that preceded her (and a good number of those who followed her) combined.

President Calvin Coolidge's car escorted by motorcycle police in New York (possibly at Grand Central?). The President and First Lady Grace Coolidge can be seen inside the car. Ca. 1923-29.