A Woman to Know: Mary Landon Baker
Better refusals than divorces, at any rate. — Mary Landon Baker
(image via National Portrait Gallery)
Mary Landon Baker racked up the engagement rings. Before she died in 1961, she rejected 65 marriage proposals — some accounts even report 67.
Mary made headlines throughout the 1920s. Her family's fortune made her a "dollar princess," and one reporter dubbed her dalliance with a Yugoslav diplomat "the greatest excitement since the World War." Most famously, she left her blue-blooded beau Allister McCormick at the altar — four times.
But her "shy bride" reputation outlasted all her romances. As she told a writer decades later: "I did not marry because I did not meet the right man at the right time in the right place."
Add to your library list:
Field Notes: Navigating the World of Weddings (The New York Times)
Dance on a Sinking Ship (Michael Kilian)
Read more:
"Mary Landon Baker is Chicago's unique contribution to Europe" (The Chicago Tribune)
She received 65 proposals but never married (The New York Times)
Failed romance relic featured in Chicago exhibit (Chicago Magazine)
165 years of love and war in the New York Times wedding announcements (The New York Times)
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