At 49, the sitting president wed 21-year-old Frances Folsom in the White House — the daughter of his late law partner, whom he'd helped support since she was ten.
Frances Folsom's father, Oscar Folsom, was a lawyer in a law partnership with Grover Cleveland in Buffalo, New York. When Oscar died in a carriage accident in 1875, Frances was 10, and Cleveland became executor of the estate.
Cleveland became her unofficial guardian. He paid off the family's debts, provided for Frances and her mother Emma, and used his authority as Buffalo's mayor to help her gain admission to Wells College. She called him 'Uncle Cleve.'
He never actually raised her. She lived with relatives and her mother, and Cleveland's role was financial and educational support rather than parenting, though he was a constant adult presence through her childhood.
During her college years, Cleveland kept up a steady correspondence, visited her, sent flowers and took her on tours. Their relationship grew into courtship, and the age gap between them was 28 years.
On June 2, 1886, President Cleveland, then 49, married the 21-year-old Frances in the Blue Room of the White House. The wedding made her First Lady while she was still in her early twenties.