Page "Nancy Reagan" Paragraph 12

During her Hollywood career Davis dated many actors, including Clark Gable, Robert Stack, and Peter Lawford ; she later called Gable the nicest of the stars she had met.

On November 15, 1949, she met Ronald Reagan, who was then president of the Screen Actors Guild.

Nancy had noticed that her name had appeared on the Hollywood blacklist and sought Reagan's help to maintain her employment as a guild actress in Hollywood, and for assistance in having her name removed from the list.

Reagan informed her that she had been confused with another actress of the same name.

The two began dating and their relationship was the subject of many gossip columns ; one Hollywood press account described their nightclub-free times together as " the romance of a couple who have no vices ".

Ronald Reagan was skeptical about marriage, however, following his painful 1948 divorce from Jane Wyman, and he still saw other women.

After three years of dating, he eventually proposed to Davis in the couple's favorite booth at the Beverly Hills restaurant Chasen's.

They married on March 4, 1952 in a simple ceremony designed to avoid the press at the Little Brown Church in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles.

The only people in attendance were actor William Holden, the best man, and his wife, actress Brenda Marshall, the matron of honor.

The couple's first child, Patricia Ann Reagan ( better known by her professional name, Patti Davis ), was born on October 21, 1952.

Their son, Ronald Prescott Reagan, was born six years later on May 20, 1958.

Nancy Reagan also became stepmother to Maureen Reagan ( 1941 – 2001 ) and Michael Reagan ( born 1945 ), the children of her husband's first marriage to Jane Wyman.