Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter: A Love Story

“Oh, please don’t. It’s a mess back there,” Rosalynn Carter gently protests as her husband, former President Jimmy Carter, beckons a reporter to have a look at the four-poster bed he built by hand. The bedroom is hardly a mess; some blazers are on hangers over the door as the couple unpack from a trip to China and repack for Atlanta, where they’ll host a mental-health conference at the Carter Center and spend the week sleeping on a Murphy bed in their office there. (Their suitcases are rarely stored: The center has programs in 80 nations—not to mention those where they have built homes for Habitat for Humanity.) But first, a tour of their Plains, Ga., home, where Jimmy Carter pauses at the artwork in the floral-wallpapered hallway. “This was my first painting, of our mountain cabin, that I did while Rosa was out shopping.” Then he buzzes into the cluttered home office—”where I write my books” (his 28th, A Call to Action: Women, Religion, Violence and Power, came out in March)—before taking off at a clip to the garage. Here, Carter, who turned 90 on Oct. 1, bends, lifts the roll-down door and hops on a three-wheel exercise scooter, refusing the helmet proffered by his longtime adviser Phil Wise. “It’s not tricky,” Carter insists, showing off in his driveway the fitness machines he and Rosalynn ride 2½ miles a day. “I’m an engineer and I’ve studied nuclear physics, but I can’t figure out what makes it work.”

Carter has been on the go since leaving the White House in 1981 after one term. In that time he has invented the modern activist post-Presidency that the higher-profile Bill Clinton has come to embody. But it is Carter who first made his name as the world’s fixer. He has monitored elections in some 40 countries, from Nepal to Ghana to Mexico. He secured the release of an American hostage in North Korea in 2010. And when the late Steve Jobs needed help ending suicides at a computer plant in China, he called Carter, who took on the job with his wife. “Rosa is the expert in mental health,” he says.

Married for 68 years, he and Rosalynn have quietly kept at their hands-on human rights and health work (nearly eradicating debilitating guinea worm in Africa) through the Carter Center, funded, in part, by $2.7 million raised so far from the auction of the 39th President’s furniture pieces and paintings.

“The progress we’ve made is so exciting,” Mrs. Carter, 87, says in a whispery drawl. “This is not the time to stop.” Indeed the couple—who “enjoy a good 18-year-old Scotch on ice,” according to fishing buddy Wayne Harpster—show no signs of slowing down. Carter makes time to teach Sunday school regularly, and the pair recently went fly-fishing in Russia. The Carters sat down with People in the only home they have ever owned—a 1960s ranch-style house—where the longest-serving ex-President declared, “My best years are now.”

PRESIDENT JIMMY CARTER: Ninety is not all that significant to me. I feel a lot younger—maybe 60, 70.

ROSALYNN CARTER: We just got back from 10 days in China, and it was very fast. He made 13 speeches.

What’s your antiaging secret?

JC: Stay busy. I exercise and eat right. My wife is an expert dietitian and a good cook.

RC: I fix fruits and vegetables. Cereal. He never turns down ice cream.

Why not take it easy?

RC: There’s so much more to do! Every time I go to Africa, I say I’m not going again because I get tired. But every time something good happens. [We’re close to] no more blinding trachoma in Ghana. You see children we gave medicine to with [signs] that say, “I’m going to be a schoolteacher or a president.” That makes you want to get medicine for the others.

And all the fly-fishing—do you like fishing or go mainly to be with him?

RC: I love it! The most beautiful spots in the world, and the Secret Service agents stay out of the way. We catch and release with barbless hooks.

JC: This summer we were in Russia’s Kola peninsula, the most remote place we’ve fished.

Given what was happening with pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine, did you contact Russia’s President Putin?

JC: I wrote him a letter when we got back, just told him how much we enjoyed fishing and suggested he go to the same place because I want to make sure that area is protected and not destroyed in the future.

Your secret for a happy marriage?

RC: I’d say space. One of the hardest times was when we came home from the White House: It was the first time we’d been together in the house all day every day. So I got my office in what was a bedroom, and his is in what was the garage.

Yet you do so much together …

RC: One nice thing about him is he thinks I can do anything. So I’ve done many things that I never would have, like downhill skiing at age 59.

JC: We do that still. And we took up bird-watching in 1988, I remember, when we climbed Mount Kilimanjaro.

True that you read to each other each night in bed?

JC: We started 40 years ago, and we’ve never missed a night, I don’t think. We read two pages of the Bible. In Spanish, by the way, just to practice our Spanish.

Could Hillary Clinton win the South in a 2016 presidential race?

JC: A governor is a powerful factor in how a state goes, so if [our grandson] Jason wins [in Georgia, see box], I think the South will then overcome its ‘Republican upbringing’ and she’ll have a better chance.

RC: I’d like to see her run.

Do you hear from President Obama?

JC: Not really. When I was President, I called Ford and Nixon until they finally asked me to leave them alone. [Laughs]

How do you hope to be remembered?

JC: For peace and human rights. We still have work to do. I’ll let you know when I slow down.

RC: That will be a definite news flash!