The First Lady Who Tamed the Bull Moose
HISTORY This Week
The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios
4.5 • 4.2K Ratings
🗓️ 15 September 2025
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
September 14, 1901. Midnight in the Adirondacks. A pounding knock at the door jolts Theodore and Edith Roosevelt awake. William McKinley is dead. Hours later, Theodore will be sworn in as the youngest president in U.S. history. But Edith barely flinches—her diary that day notes her children’s sniffles before her husband’s rise to power.
Who was this woman who grew up alongside Theodore, helped shape his presidency, reinvented the role of First Lady, and yet tried to erase her own story from the record?
Special thanks to Kathleen Dalton, author of Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life; and Edward O’Keefe, author of The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt: The Women Who Created a President. O'Keefe is also the CEO of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library, set to open next 4th of July.
Artwork: Studio portrait of Edith and Theodore Roosevelt seated together, by Walter Scott Shinn, 1916.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The History Channel, original podcast. |
| 0:04.7 | History this week. |
| 0:06.7 | September 14th, 1901. |
| 0:10.5 | I'm Sally Helm. |
| 0:15.6 | It's a nearly moonless night in the Adirondack Mountains. |
| 0:22.1 | Vice President Theodore Roosevelt is asleep inside a little vacation cottage, along with his |
| 0:28.2 | wife, Edith, and their children. |
| 0:32.4 | They're exhausted from a day spent exploring the mountains. |
| 0:36.9 | But just before midnight, a loud knocking |
| 0:41.3 | at the cottage door jolts them awake. There's an urgent message. President William |
| 0:49.3 | McKinley is in critical condition. He'd been shot about a week before, |
| 0:54.7 | but had seemed stable, |
| 0:56.6 | so stable that the Roosevelt's went on vacation. |
| 0:59.6 | But now, things have suddenly changed. |
| 1:05.8 | Theodore has to rush down in a midnight ride. |
| 1:11.1 | That's Edward O'Keefe, |
| 1:12.6 | who runs the Theodore Roosevelt Library Foundation. |
| 1:16.1 | He's in the darkness descending one of the peaks |
| 1:19.6 | of the highest points in New York State |
| 1:22.2 | and goes to the train station. |
| 1:27.1 | At the train station, Theodore gets a message. |
| 1:31.3 | He relays it to his wife back at the cottage in a simple telegram. |
... |
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