Columba Bush | |
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Bush in 2005
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First Lady of Florida | |
In role January 5, 1999 – January 9, 2007 |
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Governor | Jeb Bush |
Preceded by | Anne Selph |
Succeeded by | Carole Crist |
Personal details | |
Born |
Columba Garnica Gallo August 17, 1953 León, Mexico |
Spouse(s) | Jeb Bush (m. 1974) |
Children | 3 (including George) |
Religion | Roman Catholicism |
Website | twitter |
Columba Bush (née Garnica Gallo (American Spanish: [koˈlumba ɣaɾˈnika ˈɣaʝo]); born August 17, 1953) is a Mexican-Americanphilanthropist. Bush served as First Lady of Florida from 1999 to 2007 and is the wife of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush.
Columba Garnica Gallo was born in León, Guanajuato, Mexico, the daughter of José María Garnica Rodríguez (1925–2013), a migrant worker and waiter from Arperos, Guanajuato, and Josefina Gallo Esquivel (born 1920), from León, who were married in February 1949. Columba's father abandoned the family in 1956 when she was 3 years old and her parents divorced in 1963. Following the departure of her father, Columba and her mother remained in León.
Garnica attended Instituto Antonia Mayllen, a private Catholic school in the historic center of León.
She met Jeb Bush in 1970 in León when she was 16 years old and he was 17. Bush was teaching English as a second language and assisting in the building of a school in the small nearby village of Ibarrilla as part of a class at Andover called Man and Society.
Garnica married Bush on February 23, 1974, in Austin, Texas at the chapel in the Catholic student center on the campus of the University of Texas. At the time of the wedding, she did not speak English and a part of the wedding ceremony was conducted in Spanish.