O'Connor Rejected Rehnquist's Marriage Proposal in 1950s.
BALDWIN: OK. Now to my favorite story of the day. Long before they were on the nation's highest court, former Justices Sandra Day O'Connor and William Rehnquist were a young couple. Now, newly discovered letters are revealing that not only did O'Connor and Rehnquist date while classmates at Stanford Law School but Rehnquist proposed to O'Connor in the early 1950s. O'Connor rejected his marriage proposal as they had broken up and she was already seeing someone else. That new man, John, would later become her husband. With me now, CNN Supreme Court Analyst Joan Biskupic. I heard that this even stumped you and you wrote the book on O'Connor. You didn't even know about the proposal.</s>JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN SUPREME COURT ANALYST: I didn't, Brooke. You're right. It's everyone's favorite story today.</s>BALDWIN: Yes.</s>BISKUPIC: It's such a sweet note that Evan Thomas found. Evan is doing a new biography of her and he had access to the justice's papers herself. Someone like me had access to lots of correspondence but not this particular letter. These two people, William Rehnquist and Sandra Day, met at Stanford Law School, they had a deep friendship, they dated, they went to movies. They both graduated in '52. Shortly before graduation, she meets John O'Connor. She talked about how they met proof reading and cite checking law reviews over beers. And she warned that could be quite dangerous.</s>BISKUPIC: And they wound up having a great love affair. But here's what happened, Brooke, which is what I love about the Rehnquist/O'Connor story. They remained friends even after they both married other people. They both settled in Phoenix, Arizona, and with their families played charades, picnicked. And when he was nominated to the Supreme Court in the fall of 1971, she helped rally local support. And in 1981, when O'Connor was nominated as the first woman by William Rehnquist -- I'm sorry, by Ronald Reagan, Rehnquist writes of her, "She's a 10 strike." He was from Milwaukee, the bowling capitol. So they remained really good friends even though they never married.</s>BALDWIN: I love that. Stanford, dating, says no, ends up on the Supreme Court. It's an extraordinary story.