The Perfect Part

In recent months, McCain has been choosy about her press, granting interviews to the Chicago Tribune and Vogue but not the Arizona Republic, to "Access Hollywood" but not USA Today. Through campaign aides, she and the senator declined interview requests for this article.

Earlier this year, after the New York Times published a story that raised questions about the senator's relationship with a female lobbyist, he called a press conference and denied a romance with her. Cindy McCain stood resolutely at his side.

"My children and I not only trust my husband, but know that he would never do anything to not only disappoint our family, but disappoint the people of America,'' she said. "He's a man of great character." Staff and friends are exceedingly protective of McCain. They emphasize her strength but discuss her guardedly, as if she were fragile. Some of her friends, contacted by phone, said they needed the campaign's permission before they could talk. Two of her closest friends were made available only under the condition that a press aide could listen in on the phone interviews.

On "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" in April, McCain was poised and funny, but the anecdotes she recounted were unintentionally revealing of distance and secrets in the marriage.

She told the well-worn story of how they both fudged their ages when they met, she making herself four years older and he making himself four years younger and said they didn't find this out until "we applied for a marriage license." She shared the story she has told many times of her addiction nearly 20 years ago to prescription painkillers, which she said her husband did not know about until after her parents confronted her and she had kicked the habit.

And she told of how she decided to conquer her fear of flying in anticipation of her husband's 1986 Senate race. She knew she'd be flying all over the state in a tiny plane, she said, and it petrified her. She went to flight school, earned her pilot's license and bought an airplane -- all without ever telling him, she said, eliciting shocked titters from Leno's audience.

"She's a problem solver," says Cindy's friend Harper. "That is a strong way to get over fears."

Harper uses the word "strong" or "strength" five times in an interview to describe her friend, invoking it to describe, for example, how she didn't know about her friend's addiction and how Cindy "stepped up, made the change by herself." There are a number of painful episodes Cindy has seemed intent on experiencing on her own, including her 2004 stroke in Phoenix. She was lunching with friends, she recounted later on "Larry King Live," and found herself suddenly unable to talk. She was 49 at the time. She says she'd stopped taking her blood pressure medication.

"I was mainly more concerned about being caught in public . . . without my full faculties," she told King. "So I grabbed for my car keys, and fortunately my friends grabbed my car keys away from me, and said, 'No, there's something wrong with you.' "

Friend Lisa Keegan, an education adviser in both McCain presidential campaigns who traveled with Cindy during the 2000 run, recalls that Cindy was "pretty private" about the stroke shortly after it happened.

"I had the impression that Cindy was happy to talk about it after she'd conquered it, and not when it was frightening," Keegan says. "She's less inclined to want to be asking people to help her."

McCain has said she decided to recover from the stroke on her own, so she left her family and stayed in Southern California for several months.