The Mysterious Columba Bush - The Atlantic
in an otherwise unmemorable speech, Jeb Bush will drop a mention of his wife, like a sudden pop of color. At an event in Nevada this March, one of his first speeches of this campaign season, before a crowd of what The Washington Post called “everyday Americans,” Bush opened with a husband-still-in-thrall routine. His life, he said, can be divided into two parts: “ —before Columba and after Columba,” referring to Columba Garnica de Gallo, the woman he fell madly in love with while on a high-school trip to Mexico and then married 41 years ago. Friends of the Bush family to this day tell stories of Jeb and Columba’s deep and obvious affection for each other. Take, for example, her husband’s lifelong career passion and the main preoccupation of his family for at least three generations. In 2001, after she’d been the first lady of Florida for two years, a reporter asked whether she and her husband talked about state policy. Jeb’s time in office coincided with stretches when Columba was reportedly unhappy, because of his absence or because of troubles with one of their three children or because she herself had landed in the news in ways that mortified her. It was during Jeb Bush’s governing years that Columba let it slip to the press how her husband’s career had damaged their children, and. Source: www.theatlantic.com
