Heidi Cruz Opens Up Like Never Before…

Ted Cruz’s wife Heidi opened up to The Atlantic, and it was a really interesting piece. It’s always fascinating to read about the spouse of big political figures.

This is such a great piece on being in a political marriage, and just being in a marriage. https://t.co/934YnHvsm7

— Annie Lowrey (@AnnieLowrey) October 18, 2018

A whole new world—that is what Ted Cruz wanted to give her.

It was the spring of 2001, and Heidi Nelson was planning her nuptials to the man she’d met just over a year earlier. On Christmas break from Harvard Business School, she’d encountered the cocky and cerebral Cruz in Austin, Texas, where they were both working on George W. Bush’s presidential campaign. He was “super-smart” and “really fun” and looked like a “1950s movie star.” “It was love at first sight,” she told me.

They filled those three weeks with movies and dinners and drives. Then he took her to the airport, where she’d get on a plane back to Boston. Call me every day when your day is done, she instructed him. And he did call her, every day that spring, at about 3 or 4 a.m. Later that summer, Ted gave her a strand of pearls. Probably fake, she still thinks, but they were from Bergdorf Goodman. And this was special: She’d mentioned once that she liked to go to Bergdorf’s, to look at the china and other delicate things behind glass, and he’d listened.

For their wedding, Ted insisted on playing “A Whole New World,” which Heidi didn’t get, because they had a band. His response?

“Because no one can do Aladdin.”

That song kind of became symbolic for them and the accidental theme of Heidi’s life.

And I wanted to know what Heidi wishes she had known.

“I would say to younger women: Be intentional about your decisions,” she said. “And I do appreciate that Ted started our life together with that song, because there’s some truth to it.

“He’ll be like, ‘It’s such a great life! We have so much adventure ahead! It’s like our magic-carpet ride,’” she continued. “And sometimes I’m like, ‘I hope we don’t hit the cement.’”

Think about it. She didn’t TOTALLY know what she was getting into. For crying out loud, the man decided to run for PRESIDENT. There’s been a lot of transitioning for her and a lot of stress, which led to “the night.” Your remember, don’t you? It was one of the big “bombshells” of the nasty Republican Primary.

Not until now has Heidi publicly discussed what happened on the night of August 22, 2005. She was in Austin, visiting Ted, when it felt as though this whole new world was suffocating her. She got upset about a small thing. She can’t remember what, exactly—maybe that Ted was drinking a glass of wine and watching television, even though he still hadn’t taken out the trash.

“And then it wasn’t just that,” she explained. “It was, like, all of this—like, ‘Why am I here? And by the way, I gave up living where my family is to come here, so that I could sit on [the] 290 freeway every week to go work for a company that’s actually headquartered in New York, and I could be in headquarters if I wasn’t here with you.’”

“Like, I mean, all these things, right?” she said. “And so, I dipped.”

For Heidi, “dipping” meant walking to the side of an on-ramp near the house. Around 11 p.m., a passerby called the police to report that a woman in a pink shirt was sitting near the MoPac Expressway, her head buried in her hands. She didn’t seem to have a vehicle nearby.

I asked Heidi whether she was thinking about killing herself. “We were early in our marriage … It’s a wonderful thing—like, in a great way, you amplify each other. You’re a couple now, you’re two together, stronger. But before that, you make all your own decisions,” she said. “And there’s an adjustment that takes place when you realize that life is now all about the two of you, and that’s fine, but there are trade-offs.

“I think it’s very natural to feel afraid, to feel like things are in your path, in your wake, that were not your decision,” she continued. “I think my spirit just fell to a low place.”

She said Ted– who NEVER gets mad– picked her up, hugged her and tried to reassure her.

“Ted’s never mad,” Heidi remembered. “He just hugged me and said, ‘I just wanna make sure that you’re happy here, and that this is a successful chapter. We’re not always going to be here.’” She said the moment helped her realize how much he loved her.

“It was a challenging time. Because she was struggling with having given up a professional post that was very meaningful to her,” the senator told me recently about that night. “But we came through that process, and actually came closer together.” He said they never considered leaving Texas.

She eventually went to a Catholic retreat which helped, but she still had a bit of bitterness.

Heidi remembers her counselor, an 80-year-old Haitian woman, well. Heidi told her about the small things that had gutted her since she’d arrived in Texas. There was the time the new neighbors went starry-eyed at the Harvard diplomas hanging in the foyer. “‘Oh, your husband went to Harvard! Isn’t that so great? You must be so proud of him!’” Heidi mimicked them saying. “And I was like, ‘That’s my diploma.’”

That would’ve annoyed the heck out of me too.

The counselor “sat me down, and she looked at me and she goes, ‘I can tell you have an amazing husband. And you both will have an impact on this country,’” Heidi recalled. “She said … ‘God is going to use you, not Ted—not just Ted. You’re part of this team for a reason. God’s gonna use you to do something beyond yourself. You just let God take you to Texas, you let him take you wherever. Because there’s something bigger than you now.’”

There’s a LOT more in the original piece, but there are so many interesting snippets. It’s a lot of insight into a woman who truly made personal sacrifices for her husband. It’s not always sunshine and rainbows, and I’m grateful for her honesty. Mad respect.

Here are a few more interesting snippets.

On “the photo”:

But really, she stressed: The photo didn’t bother her. She was able to regard the situation rationally—just like her husband. “These things don’t bother Ted. He’s not saying, ‘Oh, I feel so bad; they think my wife’s ugly. You’re so pretty, Heidi. You’re not ugly,’” she said. “He’s like, ‘Hah! That was the worst move he’s ever made.’” She laughed at the memory.

On Cruz’s alleged “five affairs”:

Heidi told me she “literally laughed” when she first learned of it. “I called up Ted and I was like, ‘Have you had five affairs? Ha-ha-ha,’” she said. But a few days later, Real Heidi saw the paper at the grocery store. “And I called my mom and I was like, ‘This actually is out there. Like, this is really a thing. It hasn’t bothered me, but now I’m seeing this—do you think people read this? Do you think people believe this?’

“So,” she allowed, “you do have a moment of doubt.”

On Ted dropping out of the presidential race:

Reflecting on that night, Heidi said: “I don’t know that I even shed a tear.”

Read the entire profile here!