Michele Bachmann’s husband shares her strong conservative values

“The Lord made him more bold,” Peter Bachmann said. “And the abilities God gave him began to blossom and spring forth. He’s a leader. He has boldness, authority.”

Marcus Bachmann enrolled at Winona State University in neighboring Minnesota, where he majored in social work and met his future wife as they both volunteered supervising children at a school playground. They actively supported the presidential campaign of Democrat Jimmy Carter, himself a born-again Christian, and attended his inauguration together in Washington. Back on campus, they attended a screening of “How Should We Then Live?,” a movie with a strong antiabortion message that the couple has described as a watershed moment in their political evolution. (Last month, Michele Bachmann also said that a miscarriage solidified her opposition to abortion.) As their politics became more conservative, their relationship progressed.

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Michele Bachmann: Minnesota Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann has made a name for herself among conservative activists, but her ability to deliver for her district remains to be seen.

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In September 1978, the couple married at the Bachmann family farm in Wisconsin.

In an interview with Minnesota Monthly in 2010, Dr. Bachmann offered a professional assessment of the support he provided to his wife, whose parents divorced in her youth. “What she was looking for in a husband was clearly stability, a person of character,” he said. “She saw that stability in me, and really that was an attraction.”

In her 2006 speech, to the Living Word Christian Center, Michele Bachmann instead cited a more divine inspiration for their marriage.

“And the Lord then led me to this man,” she said, pausing to identify Marcus in the crowd. “That my calling was to marry this man. And I tell you that, because, I hate to disappoint you, darling, but it wasn’t a big romantic surge that led us to each other. It was His word.

“At the same time,” she added, “the Lord was speaking to my husband, and He showed my husband — he was repairing a fence on the farm where he worked — and the Lord showed him in a vision that he was supposed to marry me. And my husband said: ‘I don’t want to get married. I want to wait till I’m 27. I want to see the world. I want to have a great time in life. I don’t want to marry this girl.’ ”

After about three decades of marriage, Bachmann joked to the crowd, “we might have a chance. This thing might actually work out.”

Research editor Alice Crites contributed to this report.

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