From The Boston Globe, September 19, 2004.

Her husband is Governor Mitt Romney, and she has five handsome sons, just as many beautiful daughters-in-law, and seven grandchildren. But life for Ann Romney, 55, isn’t all perfect. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1998 and continues to fight the disease. For the past year, however, she says she’s had more good days than bad, which she attributes in part to a near-daily regimen of horseback riding.

1. LAST CHRISTMAS, SHE BAKED WELSH COOKIES FOR MITT’S STAFF. “[My father, Edward Davies,] was a Welsh immigrant; he was born in Maesteg, southern Wales, to coal miners. I feel like I’m only a step away from there - I feel very tied to my Welsh ancestry.”

2. SHE WASN’T SEDUCED BY BEATLEMANIA. “I saw the Beatles perform in Detroit. I was a freshman in high school. The thing I remember was everyone standing up and screaming. I was a very practical person, even then, and I looked around and I thought, this is the silliest thing I’ve ever seen. We have the Beatles here, and we can’t hear them.”

3. SHE ALMOST GAVE JULIA CHILD SOME COMPETITION. “I did a couple of TV spots in Boston, cooking segments, and one of them was with [local broadcaster] Bob Lobel. He probably wouldn’t associate it with me, but he’d probably remember doing it. I did a French tart, and he obviously didn’t know a spoon from a fork. He was a total clown.”

4. SHE ENDS THE DAY WITH JERRY, GEORGE, AND ELAINE. “Mitt and I love Seinfeld. Almost every night, we watch an episode. For comic relief from the stress of the day, we’ll come home, and maybe it’s 9, 9:30, we’ve been out, and you don’t really want to go to bed, so we TiVo Seinfeld.”

5. NOT EVERYTHING SHE TOUCHES TURNS TO GOLD. “Probably something no one knows is that I taught a little French cooking school from my home. Mitt calls it one of my great money-losers, another one of my money-losers. But I loved it.”

Copyright (c) 2004 Globe Newspaper Company