The spotlight is an uneasy place for Jeanette Dousdebes Rubio, the wife of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who entered the 2016 presidential race this week.
Dousdebes Rubio, who was a Miami Dolphins cheerleader in the 1990s, played a behind-the-scenes role in her husband’s 2010 campaign for senate and describes herself as shy and dedicated to the couple’s four children.
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“I’m not pushing myself out there. I need to be with [the] kids just to give them that balance. If he’s out there, I feel like I have to be here for them, to give them that reality,”
Dousdebes Rubio told Politico in 2012. “In the future, if I have to do it, of course I’ll do it. But in general, I am shy.”
The teen sweethearts met at the West Miami Recreation Center and married in 1998.
The couple dated for seven years before Rubio proposed atop the Empire State Building in
honor of his wife's favorite movie, “Sleepless in Seattle,” ABC News said.
At the time, a run for president wasn’t in their plans.
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"He talked about it, but it's one of those things that people talk about, you know, when they're young," Dousdebes Rubio told ABC. "We never thought it was going to come true."
Dousdebes Rubio, the daughter of Colombian immigrants, launched a consulting firm in 2011 that does work for the Braman Family Charitable Foundation and has a passion for helping victims of human trafficking.
Twitter users commented about Dousdebes Rubio’s foray into the spotlight.
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