The Separate Peace of John And Carol

"Divorced already?" asked King.

"Yes," McCain replied, although he would not be divorced for another year, "and had met with her parents, and she came to a reception, and I came to that reception, and . . . schmaltzy as it sounds, it was love at first sight, and so we started dating."

In his 2002 memoir "Worth the Fighting For," McCain wrote that he was separated from Carol when he met Cindy. But the McCains' divorce petition says the couple "co-habited" until Jan. 7, 1980, some nine months after he began his relationship with Cindy.

According to court records, McCain gave his wife full custody of their three children, possession of their two homes in Alexandria and Florida, and agreed to pay $1,625 a month in alimony and child support. He also agreed to pay daughter Sidney's college tuition and his ex-wife's medical expenses for the rest of her life.

The terms were so generous that the lawyer who handled McCain's divorce, George "Bud" Day, attached a note in the divorce filing. It indicated that Day had told his client that the settlement would be a "far more onerous a financial burden" to McCain than if he had taken his wife to court and litigated. But McCain ignored the advice of his attorney and friend, himself a former POW and Medal of Honor recipient.

"It was a pretty amicable divorce," Day recalled in a recent interview.

People who knew John and Carol around this time say they had no idea the McCains' relationship was so troubled. The couple were popular and sociable. McCain was then serving as the Navy's liaison to Congress, a job that entailed entertaining important Hill contacts. Carol and John hosted many events in their Alexandria home.

Connie Bookbinder, whose home was the setting of the McCains' wedding in 1965, says she didn't learn of discord in the marriage until Carol told her that she was getting divorced, a few weeks before the decree was final.

"There was never a sign of strain," said Bookbinder, a close friend of the woman she has called "Sheppie" since they were classmates at Centenary College in New Jersey. "She never told me, 'I think John's running around.' It came as a total surprise to her. I think he just fell in love with someone else. Someone younger and bright and charming. Sheppie wasn't bitter about it. She said, 'He's in love with someone else, and there's nothing we can do about it.' "

One of McCain's good friends, Peter Lakeland, recalls that Carol and John were still living together in Alexandria but that McCain mostly avoided talking about his marriage.

"My sense was, they were continuing to be married, but his heart wasn't in it," Lakeland says. "My own impression was that when he met Cindy, they were extraordinarily attracted to each other. They were both smitten." Lakeland accompanied McCain to the reception where he met Cindy; he later offered the couple his vacation home in Maryland for a weekend getaway.

Friends and family members say the marriage's demise was an outgrowth of the McCains' long separation during the Vietnam years.