White House History Quarterly 54 - Weddings - Robb & McLaurin

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A White House Wedding REMEMBERED

lynda johnson robb and chuck robb with stewart m c laurin

On December 9, 1967, Lynda Bird Johnson, eldest daughter of President Lyndon Johnson and First Lady Lady Bird Johnson, married Marine Captain Chuck Robb in a military ceremony in the East Room of the White House.

In December of 2018, Mrs. Robb was interviewed by Stewart McLaurin, pres ident of the White House Historical Association, about the event and her memories of living in the White House.

In January 2019, Stewart McLaurin con ducted a separate interview with Chuck Robb, Marine officer and social aide at the White House when he met and mar ried Lynda Johnson, and later governor and senator from Virginia.

For the enjoyment of readers of White House History Quarterly , we have merged selected highlights of the inter views, retaining the question-and-an swer format. Like any couple married for more than fifty years, they cherish mem ories of their wedding but tell different stories about how they met and courted.

STEWART M C LAURIN to LYNDA ROBB: The first White House wed ding occurred back in 1812, when Dolley Madison’s sister, Lucy Payne Washington, married Supreme Court Justice Thomas Todd. The first child of a president to marry in the White House was Maria Hester Monroe in 1820. It was the social event of the year in Washington. One president of the United States married in the White House: Grover Cleveland to Frances Folsom in 1886. And then there’s the very special occasion that we’re talking about today with Lynda Johnson Robb.

Your husband, Charles Robb, was a Marine captain and social aide in the White House. Starting back in the Theodore Roosevelt administration military officers have been assigned as social aides to help with visiting

dignitaries and guests of the White House during official functions. And is that how you got to know each other, with him in that role?

LYNDA ROBB: Absolutely. Military officers can volunteer for extra duty as a social aide. When we got mar ried, there were aides representing each of the services—the Marines, Air Force, Army, Navy, and Coast Guard.

And were you part of that selection process . . . ?

LYNDA ROBB: Not at all! But the Social Aides were a group I saw fairly frequently. Many became my friends and I also dat ed several so I would laugh and say that

Lynda Bird Johnson enjoys a dance with her fiancé, Marine Captain Charles Robb, at the Marine Corps Ball in November 1967. The couple met while Captain Robb served as a social aide at the White House and more than fifty years later, Mrs. Robb recalled that the ability to dance was an important qualification for social aides at the time.

previous spread

Newlyweds Chuck and Lynda Robb prepare to cut their wedding cake in the East Room as the bride’s parents, President and Mrs. Lyndon Johnson, look on.

I want to go and pick out people! Most importantly, they needed to be able to dance, because Daddy loved dancing. He knew how important it was for every woman who was a guest at the White House to be able to go home and say, “I danced last night with the president.”

He told the social aides that after he had danced a little while with one of his guests, to please come and tap him on the shoulder and cut in, so he could dance with another woman. You know, in the olden days, that was something that you could do. That way, it wouldn’t be embar rassing for him to dance only two or three minutes with one guest.

Is that how you met Captain Robb, he cut in on a dance with you?

LYNDA ROBB: No, the way we met is that his roommate, who was also a social aide, was dating my roommate, who was living with us at the time. I loved to play bridge, and after a State Dinner, I would ask if anyone wanted to go upstairs and play bridge. Chuck started joining in the upstairs bridge games. We met with the press not knowing anything about it. And when we announced that we were getting married, the reporters were surprised: why didn’t you tell us, we thought you were dating? And I was dating other peo ple until we decided to get married. But it was a very unusual way to meet.

STEWART MCLAURIN to CHUCK

ROBB: Tell us about your memories of first meeting the eldest daughter of the president.

CHUCK ROBB: We have different sto ries on that particular matter! She thinks that we met at her house, which was the White House. I think we first met at my house, which was the bachelor officers quarters called Center House at Marine Barracks, where the commandant of the Marine Corps and a number of threestar generals lived, and where the Marine Corps Band and the Marine Corps Drum

and Bugle Corps are also stationed. I was the adjutant at Marine Barracks, an assignment that at the time included pro tocol duties.

And what did your fellow military social aides think of your dating the daughter of the president?

CHUCK ROBB: I don’t know that I ever got a take on that, but the best man in our wedding was also a Marine.

Tell us about your perspective on being a young military social aide in the White House, and what some of your duties were.

CHUCK ROBB: I didn’t apply to become one. I was asked to be the senior aide to the commanding general of the Second Marine Division and was told I would be preselected by the Marine Corps to be a military aide and would have an interview before a final determination was made. I got so used to going over to the White House during that peri od. We were sort of like the furniture. I was part of the working furniture at the White House. At State Dinners in the White House I’d usually be assigned to stand next to the president and intro duce the guests as they came down the receiving line. I would give the president the title and name of the person. After a State Dinner, when the social aides had completed our duties, Lynda would fre quently invite me and sometimes other aides to come up to the Solarium to play bridge. That is how it got started. We weren’t really dating at that point, but Lynda did on several occasions invite me to be her escort at events in Washington. I was a little slow on the take up.

STEWART M CLAURIN to LYNDA

ROBB: There was another wedding in the Johnson family, which took place in August 1966 at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington. And that

was the wedding of your sister, Luci Baines Johnson. She had her recep tion at the White House but she didn’t get married at the White House. I’ve read that you actually caught the bou quet, which she threw from the famous Truman Balcony. And sixteen months later, you were married to Captain Robb. Is that true?

LYNDA ROBB: It is true. Those of us who married in the White House differ entiate ourselves from those who just had a reception there, or a private event.

STEWART MCLAURIN to CHUCK ROBB: Do you have memories of Luci’s wedding?

CHUCK ROBB: I do. That was the first time Lynda and I were photographed together, although it was not an official photograph. I was a military social aide at Luci’s wedding. I greeted guests at the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and helped them to their seats. Then afterward Luci had a reception at the White House. When it was time for the official wedding photograph, I helped the ring bearer and the flower girl get into the front row. All the other members of the wedding party were on the stair case. That picture of me putting them in position was not an official photograph, but it was the first time that anybody had caught Lynda and me in the same lens.

We were very private. With the excep tion of my being an official escort at some events at Lynda’s request, we had not otherwise gone out anywhere but to friends’ houses, usually friends who were in Lynda’s father’s administration. Once I was stowed aboard Air Force One and the press didn’t know it until we went to a little church in Fredericksburg, Texas, one of the closest to the LBJ Ranch, and the reporters saw the president and the first lady and Lynda and me all come out of the church together and they took a lot of pictures. That’s the first time I think that the press corps realized that there was something serious going on. The fact that we had been seeing each other became known, because someone with a

During his interview with Stewart McLaurin, Senator Robb recalled that the first time he was captured in a photograph with his future wife was during the wedding of her sister, Luci Johnson. While performing his duties as a social aide he helped the ring bearer and flower girl into position for an official wedding photograph (opposite). Although the couple attempted to keep their relationship secret, the press corps began to suspect the romance when Captain Robb was photographed with the Johnson family following a church service in Fredericksburg, Texas. The two were captured in photographs again when Lynda served as a bridesmaid for a former classmate in September 1967 (below).

telephoto lens caught a picture of Lynda and me at Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, with other White House social aides, where we liked to go during the summer. That was the first time that we were pho tographed as a couple.

As a Marine officer and as a protocol officer, how does one ask the com mander in chief for the daughter’s hand in marriage?

CHUCK ROBB: Well, first of all Lynda and I privately decided to get married. It was a decision that we reached after having had dinner at the home of the then curator of the White House, Jim Ketchum. We had been seen together, as “a couple.” I had no ring at that point, and I had not intended to get engaged that night as a matter of fact. But we had both spent enough time together, and we were up in the Solarium, which has a great view of Washington, particularly at night when the full moon is out. And we talked for several hours and decided to get mar ried. She was so excited she wanted to go

tell her father and mother, but her par ents were asleep. When she was a little girl and she had something special that wanted to say she’d go into her parents’ bedroom and pull on her mother’s hand in bed and get her mother to come out and talk to her. This night she startled her mother, who said something. And her father heard, and Lynda said something to the effect that she wanted to talk to her mother, and her father said, don’t you want to talk to me? And it was kind of cute, Lynda wrote the whole thing down at the time. The next day I sent Lynda a dozen long stem red roses. When they were delivered to the White House they were inadvertently given to her mother and Lynda saw them and said, “those are mine!” Fortunately I think both of us felt very good about the decision that we had made jointly to get married. In any event, about a week later I called one of the president’s secretaries and asked for a personal appointment. I was escorted into the Queens’ Sitting Room in the White House, and the president came in almost immediately thereafter

and he said, first thing, “Welcome.” And we didn’t really know each other in the way that we got to know each other later on. He knew only that I was the person standing next to him in receiving lines, although I’m sure he knew about my record in the Marine Corps or I might not have gotten that assignment to begin with. And I said, “Mr. President, I suspect you know why I’m here.” And he in a very appealing way said, “yes, I believe I do.” And then I went through the formal ask ing for his daughter’s hand in marriage, and he said, “yes, you have it and my love.”

STEWART M C LAURIN to LYNDA ROBB: Now tell us how a captain in

the Marine Corps asks for the hand of the daughter of the president of the United States.

LYNDA ROBB: Well, I can’t speak for anybody else, but the way we did it is that I told my parents that I—

Oh, you gave them a briefing in advance?

LYNDA ROBB: Absolutely, after Chuck had asked me.

That’s great. Tell us about how you decided on the East Room. Did you have that in mind all along, or did you

The engagement of Lynda Johnson and Marine Captain Charles Robb was announced with a press conference on the White House lawn in September 1967.

Captain Robb is seen picking up a marriage license on December 6, 1967, three days before his wedding to Lynda Johnson.

think about the Rose Garden as a place to get married?

LYNDA ROBB: I never thought about it at all. It was just—it seemed the most natural place to have it.

The biggest space in the White House.

LYNDA ROBB: But I had no idea. Bess Able, who was the social secretary—in our time, she was the wonderful impre sario—She planned things and she told me this is the way we should do this or that. She loved it.

Your wedding marked the first time a president’s daughter had been mar ried in the White House since 1914, more than fifty-three years earlier, when President Woodrow Wilson’s daughter Eleanor was married. Did you study other White House wed dings to plan your own?

LYNDA ROBB: I had read about lots of the traditions of the White House. The last big wedding, was Alice Roosevelt Longworth’s in 1906. She told me unbe lievable stories about what she received, including a tiger rug.

What everyone needs!

LYNDA ROBB: We told everybody that this is not a state wedding, and state governments are not supposed to be sending presents. But some did send presents. And to me it’s just a magical thing, I didn’t have anything to do with the decorations, I didn’t—

You didn’t express any preferences?

LYNDA ROBB: Well, red has always been my color. And I was getting mar ried near Christmas, so in some ways it was very handy, because the same deco rations could be used, and that was great.

My mother was always trying to find ways to save money. There were things that the White House had, obviously we didn’t have to rent a big room.

Well, it’s very limited space, even though it’s the largest room in the White House. How did you decide who to invite?

LYNDA ROBB: Very difficult, and as a matter of fact we had a book. And we had people under categories. Daddy and Mother had a category of people they wanted invited. And the Robbs (Chuck’s parents) had a category of their friends that they would like, and then Chuck had his, and I had mine. And our lists were the smallest. Things have changed. It used to be that the parents gave the wedding and the rehearsal dinner. And some of the people were dear friends of mine, the senators, because I had grown up with them. I was born when Daddy was in Congress, so a lot of these people were my friends, too.

What about other presidential family members from other first families?

LYNDA ROBB: Alice Roosevelt Longworth came, and everybody wanted to take her picture.

You put on your wedding gown upstairs and the president of the United States walked down the Grand Staircase with you. As you prepared to go into the East Room, what were you seeing—what were you feeling?

LYNDA ROBB: Well, I took a lot of deep breaths first. And I had practiced walking up and down the steps in that long gown because I didn’t want to trip, and I didn’t want to be looking at my feet all the time. The door closed behind me and I couldn’t get back in . . .

It’s the point of no return.

LYNDA ROBB: I have to tell you, it was traumatic for my father. He was really sad, and the night before, at the rehearsal dinner, Daddy just looked like he lost his best friend. Sad about giving up his first born. And we have wonderful pictures of Mother, and she’s kissing him on the cheek and telling him, “it’s going to be all right.”

That’s a wonderful story.

LYNDA ROBB: Daddy’s darling daugh ter. That night, my father made a toast to me. And he had lots of pieces of paper and said, “I’m going to read to you some of the Secret Service reports about the courtship of—

Oh no!

LYNDA ROBB: Lynda Johnson and Charles Robb.” And then he said, “November 18th, Chuck Robb enters White House at 6:30. Leaves at 12:30 that night.” And he had all these pieces of paper. And then he said, “I’m going to tear up these papers and make them into wedding confetti,” and of course we all laughed. And then Daddy told about the first time he saw me after I was born.

Oh, wow.

LYNDA ROBB: And by this time I was sobbing, and we were all sobbing, he was saying, you were just a little baby in a warm blanket and you meant so much to us. Because my mother had many miscarriages, my parents were married almost ten years before I was born, and so I was special in that sort of way. It was a very sentimental night before the wed ding for daddy especially.

It’s so poignant to hear these tender moments with your father, the very strong Lyndon B. Johnson, president of the United States. But you haven’t

President Lyndon Johnson walks his daughter down the Grand Staircase from the private quarters to the State Floor of the White House. During her interview with Stewart McLaurin, Mrs. Robb recalled that it was hard for her father to give his eldest daughter away.

said much about your mom in this sto ry, the first lady of the United States. How was she on the day of the wedding, with her daughter getting married?

LYNDA ROBB: Mother was calm always. I never saw her flustered, and that’s both a good thing and a bad thing. I tried to emulate her, and of course I couldn’t, be cause I had at least 50 percent of Lyndon Johnson, and he never sat still. But

Mother was calm and kept everybody calm. Loving, but no flibbertigibbet from my mother, ever that I saw her. My father gave her many, many, reasons to be upset or nervous or anxious or what ever. All of their married life he would call her and say, “I’m bringing six people home for dinner,” or whatever, at the last minute. But Mother was very happy about the marriage.

Tell us about the wedding gifts you gave to both sets of parents.

LYNDA ROBB: It was made from a pin that I gave to my bridesmaids, a little gold Marine bulldog mounted on a piece of wood along with a bird with a heart and an arrow through it. It had two symbols—the Marine Corps and Lynda Bird—under glass. It sat on my mother’s dresser for many, many years. And where is it today?

LYNDA ROBB: On my mother’s dresser, on loan to the Park Service. You can go on a tour and see it.

STEWART MCLAURIN: And what other memories do you have of that special day?

CHUCK ROBB: I remember that I was very, very happy when I got in my lit tle green Austin Healey to drive to the White House. I had asked some of my fellow Marines stationed with me at Eighth and I Street to be ushers and provide the saber arch. And my best man was the Marine who also served as a social aide with me. Then Lynda and I had a very short honeymoon. We have never told anybody where we spent our first night.

LYNDA ROBB: Daddy was sad a little bit about losing his daughter, although I wasn’t very lost, because when Chuck left for Vietnam, I moved right back in the White House.

Governor Robb recalled that one of his most special memories of the wedding was crossing under the saber arch provided by his fellow Marines with his new wife (opposite) as they exited the East Room after the ceremony. The couple proceeded to walk through the Entrance Hall as their guests looked on (above).

CHUCK ROBB: We had a relative ly short period of time to plan for the wedding because Lynda knew from the beginning that I wanted very much to go to Vietnam. I had been putting that on my fitness reports, requesting that my next duty station be Vietnam. She knew that, she knew that I was going to go and said she wanted to have the wedding before I went.

LYNDA ROBB: We got engaged in September and got married sooner than I would have liked because he was going to be going to Vietnam. And so we wanted to be married a little while before he left. It was just three months. And this was a very tough time. The war in Vietnam was raging, and I knew that something could happen to Chuck. And so a lot of people were thinking that maybe Daddy would change his orders, but Chuck was

determined to go. And then once Chuck went, there were questions, because he would be very vulnerable if he was cap tured. It was a time full of tension.

Your wedding was a bright spot for our country during a very challenging and difficult time. What are some of your strongest memories about that period in our nation’s history and with your father as president of the United States?

LYNDA ROBB: I could hear the protests outside. It was horrible to hear people protesting but that’s one of the wonder ful things about our country: you might not like what’s going on, and you have the right to assemble. And they would be out doing their constitutional duty, in their eyes, to protest. But it was hard hearing them protest while my husband was over in Vietnam. I was expecting his baby, and I was scared about what was happening to him. Because I was liv ing with my father in the White House

I think I came to represent to him all those many other women and men and and mothers and fathers and so forth, who were concerned about their loved ones far away. Chuck made sure that they sent him to a very dangerous place, because he wanted to be really in the action. You know, Mary Todd Lincoln forbade the president from letting their oldest son go, and the son very much wanted to go and serve in the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln just said to him, listen, it will drive your mother crazy if she has to carry that burden. Robert Lincoln did eventually get put on Grant’s staff for a very short time. Franklin Roosevelt faced the same horrible dilemma. He is supposed to have said, “The American public will not be happy until one of my sons is laid out in the East Room.” It’s hard to believe he said that, it must have been a private thing, because through that war that he took us through, he always seemed to have an upbeat spirit. But it weighs on a president to

have a child serve in combat. If you study American history, you will find that not very many presidential children served in a war.

Anyway, it was an unbelievable time, and 1968 was the year from hell for us. There wasn’t a thing in the Bible about calamities that didn’t happen to us. Two good things happened. One was our daughter Lucinda’s birth in October, and the second was in December when Apollo 8 became the first manned space craft to orbit the Moon and return to Earth. I remember the Christmas Eve television broadcast in which the astro nauts read in turn the first ten verses from the Book of Genesis. Otherwise it was a very, very difficult time for me, for Chuck, for Daddy.

So the White House was the home to Lucinda Desha Robb, when she arrived the next October.

LYNDA ROBB: Yes, that was her first home for almost three months.

CHUCK ROBB: Lynda said she want ed to have a project while I was gone. Of course the main project was being preg nant and giving birth without having a husband to help. But she would write me every day and send me all kinds of things, including tapes. Her father had given each of us portable tape recorders, and I took mine to Vietnam and Lynda had hers, so she could listen to the tapes I sent.

STEWART MCLAURIN to CHUCK ROBB: You went on to have an

After Captain Robb left for duty in Vietnam in February 1968, Lynda Robb returned to the White House to live. Daughter Lucinda Desha Robb, born in October 1968, spent her first Christmas in the White House (opposite).

Chuck and Lydna Robb’s family (below in 2017) has grown to include three daughters, Lucinda Desha Robb, Catherine Lewis Robb, and Jennifer Wickliffe Robb, two sons-in-law, Joshua Glazer and Lars Florio, and five grandchildren.

extraordinarily distinguished career in public service in our country, for which we’re very grateful. Both you and Lynda have been wonderful friends of the Association and great leaders in our country and we appreci ate all that you have given and done for us and so we congratulate you on your fiftieth wedding anniversary.

CHUCK ROBB: For our fiftieth, we invited the original wedding party and many of the guests that we knew were still alive. We converted the house that we live in into what was the functional equivalent of a hotel ballroom and did a black tie dinner, got an orchestra to come play for the dancing, and had a great time. And of course we had our children and grandchildren on display. It was a very great occasion for us, memorable in every respect. Lynda has the distinction of being the only presidential daughter married in the White House who has had the privilege of celebrating a golden wedding anniversary.

LYNDA ROBB: For many years, when he was in the Senate, Chuck would ask if we could come over to the White House on December 9 around 4:00 p.m., so we could stand in the East Room on our an niversary. The most important people to get to know at the White House are the ushers—not the presidents and first ladies, because they leave. So I always tried to stay good friends with the ushers. One time, I think it was our twentieth wedding anniversary, or maybe it was our twenty-fifth, the usher said we could come over, and the White House staff gave us champagne to toast.

CHUCK ROBB: Yes, we toasted our mar riage and stood in the East Room and remembered our wedding.

NOTE

Stewart McLaurin’s full interviews with Lynda Johnson Robb and Governor Chuck Robb are available as podcasts on the White House Historical Association website, www.whitehousehistory. org/1600-sessions.