Wednesday, October 03, 2007

I married a cadaver

In a story for Monday's issue, Thompson said: "I almost think they had to fabricate that trophy-wife stuff because there's nothing interesting to say."

Jeri Thompson is a Naperville, Ill., native who has worked for the Republican National Committee, on Capitol Hill, and at a public relations-lobbying firm.

Thompson, 41, says she met her future husband at a Nashville supermarket on July 4, 1996, a few years before she moved to Washington. To hear her tell it, the then-U.S. senator from Tennessee was standing in line with a can of beanie weenies and half a premade tuna fish sandwich.

"I looked at him and just said, 'I'm so sorry,"' Thompson says, adding that he carried her groceries to the car, and she invited him to a friend's party that night.

Years later, she tells People: "I was never an older-man-dater kind of girl before."