How Has the Prophet Lived to Be 101? Could It Be…Polygamy?
President Russell M. Nelson turned 101 years old this month, a milestone that very few people reach. According to the Actuarial Life Table on the Social Security Administration’s website, out of every 1,000 Americans born in 1924, only 4.3 of them are still alive.
How did he manage such a feat? Combined with a healthy lifestyle, good DNA and luck, I have a theory. Almost twenty years ago he married a woman 26 years younger than him with a Ph.D. in gerontology who specializes in the study and care of aging people – and perhaps she’s helped keep him alive.
President Nelson’s first wife Dantzel passed away unexpectedly in February 2005. He married Wendy Watson as his second eternal plural wife in April 2006.
I have no problem with a widow or widower remarrying and finding happiness in another relationship, nor do I mind them finding it quickly. I am however bothered when the story of their meeting and marriage sounds one sided and possibly even spiritually coercive. No matter where I read about their courtship it sounds to me like President Nelson used his position as an apostle to hand select Wendy as his wife, based on characteristics she had that he liked and needed. She did eventually accept his proposal and seems to genuinely enjoy being married to him now, but I can’t imagine a world where a woman as faithful as her didn’t feel enormous pressure to accept the offer of an apostle to be sealed to him.
The age gap between Wendy and her husband is so large that she’s younger than his eldest children and was born less than a year apart from one of his own daughters coincidentally also named Wendy. She’d never married and had built a fulfilling career and single life, including traveling the world with one of her best friends, Sheri Dew.
It was only three months after Dantzel Nelson passed away unexpectedly that Wendy and Sheri were in Italy together and travelled to see the creation of the first stake in Rome – presided over by apostle Russell M. Nelson.
On his long flight to Rome, President Nelson’s secretary had packed several books for him to read – including one authored by Wendy Watson. At the beginning of the stake conference, he read a note with her name on it, and her name leapt off the page at him. (Probably because he’d just barely finished reading her book.) He had a strong spiritual impression to meet her, then took her name to the temple where he again felt impressed to find her.
In a Church News video Wendy describes being totally unsure of “Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles” making overtures about getting to know her better and says, “In my own mind, I had wrestled with it and was quite certain there was no possible way that could be right.” She went away by herself and spent two days fasting and praying, stating she was “really serious … actually, desperate” for answers. The heavens finally opened and she knew that it was the Lord’s will for her to enter into this potential relationship with Russell M. Nelson.
Fast forward to their wedding day – President Hinckley sealed them together, then they did an endowment session with their families. After this, they got in the car and left on their honeymoon. It was the first time they had ever been alone in a vehicle together.
I cannot fathom leaving on a honeymoon with a man 26 years older than me who I’ve literally never even sat alone in a car with before. Was requesting an entire endowment session after their sealing a way for her to postpone her wedding night a few more hours? (The equivalent for me would be leaving for a wedding night with a 70 year old widower, because I am 44. I would also be dragging my feet.)
Wendy says about their marriage being arranged by God: “We think, oh it’s the Lord’s will. That means everything is just going to be easy and wonderful and marvelous, and instead it was tough. We had different expectations. He was still grieving Dantzel without a doubt. Here we are, thrown together – it was a huge change. I say “dramatic”…but it was “traumatic”. Leaving my profession that I loved, that I had devoted my life to…marrying a man 26 years older than I, and moving.”
In an interview with the Deseret News a few days before his sealing to Wendy he spoke only of the loneliness he’d felt since Dantzel’s death and gave no hints whatsoever that he was about to remarry. I understand this could be for privacy, but it would also feel strange if my soon to be husband didn’t even mention my existence mere days before our wedding – instead only talking about his late wife and how sad he was to be missing her. I would feel less like the woman he loved and more like a box he needed to check.
In his April 2018 General Conference talk President Nelson admits using his powers of priesthood revelation to convince Wendy she was to be his next wife. He said, “To strengthen my proposal to Wendy, I said to her, ‘I know about revelation and how to receive it.’”
Others have reported variations of this, such as him saying to Wendy, “There are plenty of things I do not know about you, but I do know revelation.”
While it’s mentioned often that he received revelation that she was to be his wife, there’s no mention of love or Wendy feeling drawn to him the way he was to her. He just received revelation, and (unsurprisingly) as a believing member of the church she followed the direct revelation given to her by an apostle.
Yet isn’t that kind of like Satan’s plan – just being told what to do and doing it? If she had felt excited about the possibility of getting to know him better, why did she need to go fast and pray for two days alone in the mountains, desperate for an answer that matched his? She describes marrying him as a “traumatic” event in her life. I don’t get happy newlywed vibes from her story at all!
I’ve heard other versions of this story before, like when a returned missionary at BYU told a girl he’d received revelation in the temple that she was to be his wife, or when Joseph Smith approached more than one girl to tell her that an angel with a sword had commanded her to marry him.
Both Wendy and Russell claim their meeting and marriage was orchestrated by the Lord. Yet if Wendy views the words of her husband as coming from God, isn’t it more accurate to say their marriage was orchestrated by Russell M. Nelson?
Finally, I can’t help being reminded of another version of this from my high school days, when I overheard a teenage boy joking that he’d be sure to have at least one really hot wife, then another one who was good at cooking, and another who was good at cleaning. Did President Nelson likewise pick one woman to be his true love and the mother of his children, then another woman to be his caretaker in his old age?
(By the way, “Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles” is exactly what she called him when they met, and nowadays she almost always calls him “President Russell Marion Nelson”. She refers to him by his full name and priesthood title, even after almost two decades of marriage.)
