Hillary Clinton's Life Pivots Once More

Former President Bill Clinton applauds his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on her re-election as she speaks to supporters at a Democratic victory party in New York, Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2006. Clinton will embark on a widely anticipated campaign for the White House Saturday, Jan. 20, 2007, a former first lady intent on becoming the nation's first female president. (AP Photo/Frank Franklin ) (Frank Franklin - AP)

They married in 1975. For the next quarter-century, Rodham was the one to give ground _ even on her name.

Rodham kept her maiden name when they first married, seeing it as a small gesture to show "I was still me." She later bowed to local pressure and became Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The Arkansas years, with Bill Clinton serving first as state attorney general and later as governor, began Hillary's education on life as a political spouse. She practiced law, became a mother, worked as an advocate for women and children.

She had no premonition of how the Clintons' tangled relationships and business dealings in a small state where everyone seemed to know one another would mushroom into big trouble when they made the leap to national politics.

Even as the Clintons grew in stature and laid the groundwork for their national emergence, the troubles that would weigh them down and bring the likes of prosecutor Kenneth Starr into their lives also developed _ the land deal known as Whitewater, Bill Clinton's adventures with other women, and questionable commodity trades by Hillary Clinton.

In the summer of 1991, the Clintons and daughter Chelsea, then 11, vacationed in British Columbia and it was then, she said, that the decision was made for her husband to run for president. "I could not have predicted all that would happen, but I believed Bill was prepared," she wrote in her memoir. "We figured: What did we have to lose?"

Within months, Hillary Clinton was pleading for a "zone of privacy" in the mosh pit of the 1992 campaign.

Headlines splashed Gennifer Flowers' claims of a 12-year affair with Bill Clinton and other rumors of his womanizing.

Hillary Clinton planted herself on a couch next to her husband and defended her marriage during an appearance on CBS' "60 Minutes" meant to salvage his gasping campaign.

"I love him and I respect him and I honor what he's been through and what we've been through together. ... If that's not enough for people, then heck, don't vote for him," she said.

Conservatives vilified her as a radical feminist who felt disdain for the family unit. Her offhand remark that she chose to work when she could have "stayed home and baked cookies and had teas" only inflamed tensions.

Bill Clinton's declaration that a vote for him would get voters "two for the price of one" led critics to speculate that the couple planned a co-presidency _ "Billary," they called it.