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Sandra Day O. Connor is sworn in by Chief Justice Warren Burger. Her husband, John O'Connor, attends the Supreme Court on September 25, 1981. (National Archives of the United States / Reuters) (Handout / Reuters)
Decades before sitting together on the Supreme Court, William Rehnquist and Sandra Day O'Connor were engaged in another type of court.
The two men came together while they were attending Stanford Law School – they regularly shared notes and eventually became a couple. Although Sandra Day, as she was known at the time, finally broke up with Rehnquist and married another Stanford Law classmate, John O'Connor, an author. NPR recently revealed in the early 1950s that it had rejected a proposed marriage proposal from Rehnquist, the future Chief Justice.
Rehnquist graduated one semester earlier and went to Washington for an internship at the Supreme Court. In a letter to Day, who had already started dating John O'Connor, Rehnquist said he wanted to see her and discuss "important things," NPR authored Evan Thomas on Wednesday.
Rehnquist wrote later: "To be specific, Sandy, do you want to marry me this summer?"
Thomas discovered these letters by researching his next book "First", a biography of O'Connor, proposed by Ronald Reagan at the country's highest court in 1981.
Oconnor's son, Jay, told NPR that the news of the proposal was a surprise to his family members, even though they had previously known that his mother had a romantic relationship with Rehnquist.
"Dating was pretty innocent in the '50s," Jay O'Connor told NPR. He added that "several men made proposals to my mother while she was at the university and law school, and finally, it's my dad who was the real deal" .
Instead, she would marry John O'Connor and become Sandra Day O'Connor in 1952. Although her relationship with Rehnquist never prospered, they remained close friends until her death in 2005; they even became neighbors at one point.
"It was just an extraordinary accident in history. . . my mother and her friend, as well as my law school friend, ended up together in the Supreme Court, "his son told NPR. "They not only had a great working relationship for more than 25 years in the field, but they also had a wonderful friendship all their lives."
Earlier this month, O'Connor announced that she was retiring from public life after being diagnosed with dementia. She served on the Supreme Court from 1981 to 2006.
Read more:
Sandra Day O'Connor, retired Supreme Court Justice, announces her withdrawal from public life because of dementia
"My dear Ruth": The remarkable devotion of Ruth Bader Ginsburg's husband
Rumor has it that a Supreme Court candidate killed a man – and sailed until confirmed
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