(17 March 1905 - 12 April 1945) (his death) (6 children)
In mid-1902, Franklin was formally introduced to his future wife Eleanor Roosevelt, though they had met briefly as children. Eleanor and Franklin were fifth cousins, once removed, and Eleanor was the niece of Theodore Roosevelt. They began corresponding with each other after that meeting, and in October 1904, Franklin proposed marriage to Eleanor. At the time of their engagement, Roosevelt was twenty-two and Eleanor nineteen.
Eleanor and Franklin with their first two children, 1908
On March 17, 1905, Roosevelt married Eleanor in New York City, despite the fierce resistance of his mother. While she did not dislike Eleanor, Sara Roosevelt was very possessive of her son, believing he was too young for marriage. She attempted to break the engagement several times. Eleanor's uncle, President Theodore Roosevelt, stood in at the wedding for Eleanor's deceased father Elliott, as Eleanor was his favorite niece. The young couple moved into Springwood, his family's estate at Hyde Park, where Roosevelt's mother became a frequent house guest, much to Eleanor's chagrin. The home was owned by Roosevelt's mother until her death in 1941 and was very much her home as well. In addition, Franklin Roosevelt and his mother Sara did the planning and furnishing of a town house she had built for the young couple in New York City; she had a twin house built alongside, with connections on every floor. Eleanor never felt it was her house.
Biographer James MacGregor Burns said that young Roosevelt was self-assured and at ease in the upper class. In contrast, Eleanor at the time was shy and disliked social life, and at first stayed at home to raise their several children. Like his father had, Franklin left the raising of the children to his wife, while Eleanor in turn largely relied on hired caregivers to raise the children. Referring to her early experience as a mother, she later stated that she knew "absolutely nothing about handling or feeding a baby." Although Eleanor had an aversion to sexual intercourse and considered it "an ordeal to be endured", she and Franklin had six children, the first four in rapid succession:
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt (1906 – 1975)
James Roosevelt II (1907 – 1991)
Franklin Roosevelt (1909 – 1909)
Elliott Roosevelt (1910 – 1990)
Franklin Delano Roosevelt Jr. (1914 – 1988)
John Aspinwall Roosevelt II (1916 – 1981)
Roosevelt had various extra-marital affairs, including one with Eleanor's social secretary Lucy Mercer, which began soon after she was hired in early 1914. In September 1918, Eleanor found letters revealing the affair in Roosevelt's luggage. Franklin contemplated divorcing Eleanor, but Sara objected strongly and Lucy would not agree to marry a divorced man with five children. Franklin and Eleanor remained married, and Roosevelt promised never to see Lucy again. Eleanor never truly forgave him, and their marriage from that point on was more of a political partnership. Eleanor soon thereafter established a separate house in Hyde Park at Val-Kill, and increasingly devoted herself to various social and political causes independently of her husband. The emotional break in their marriage was so severe that when Roosevelt asked Eleanor in 1942—in light of his failing health—to come back home and live with him again, she refused. He was not always aware of when she visited the White House and for some time she could not easily reach him on the telephone without his secretary's help; Roosevelt, in turn, did not visit Eleanor's New York City apartment until late 1944.
Franklin broke his promise to Eleanor to refrain from having affairs. He and Lucy maintained a formal correspondence, and began seeing each other again in 1941, or perhaps earlier. Lucy was with Roosevelt on the day he died in 1945. Despite this, Roosevelt's affair was not widely known until the 1960s. Roosevelt's son Elliott claimed that his father had a 20-year affair with his private secretary, Marguerite "Missy" LeHand. Another son, James, stated that "there is a real possibility that a romantic relationship existed" between his father and Princess Märtha of Sweden, who resided in the White House during part of World War II. Aides began to refer to her at the time as "the president's girlfriend", and gossip linking the two romantically appeared in the newspapers.