Love letters between former president Lyndon Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson go on display

Presidential love letters released

Portrait of the 36th U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. (1908-1973) (Courtesy of the National Archives/Newsmakers)

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Posted: 02/14/2013

AUSTIN, Texas - The entire collection of nearly 100 love letters written between Lyndon Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson during their 2 1/2-month courtship in 1934 is being made available to the public for the first time beginning on Valentine's Day.

The letters at the LBJ Presidential Library at the University of Texas show an impatient Johnson, then a 26-year-old congressional aide, eager to marry 21-year-old Claudia Alta Taylor. She was known as "Bird," was a recent graduate of the university, and the future president had asked her to marry him a day after they met in September 1934. She wrote she loved him but "don't know how everlastingly."

They would tie the knot 10 weeks later in San Antonio and were married for 39 years. LBJ died 1973, Lady Bird in 2007.

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