Before Joe, there was Bill Stevenson — the man Jill married when she was just 18.
“I was betrayed,” Stevenson told Inside Edition. “Joe was my friend. Jill was my wife.”
As Joe Biden tells the story, he first saw Jill’s photo on an advertisement in Wilmington, Delaware in March 1975. His brother Frank, who knew the model from college, set Joe up on a blind date the following night.
But Jill and Joe's relationship actually started in 1974, when Stevenson was still married to Jill.
Bill and Jill first got to know Joe Biden when Biden was a county councilman in New Castle, Delaware. Stevenson asked for Biden’s help obtaining a liquor license. Stevenson also threw a fundraiser for Joe.
“We got married in '70, I introduced Joe to Jill in ‘72. Right before the election in ‘72, Jill, Joe, Neilia and I were in his kitchen. How do you forget that?” Stevenson said.
That would be three years before the now-famous “blind date.” Stevenson says his first inkling something was up came when Jill refused to go with him to meet Bruce Springsteen, who was booked to appear at The Stone Balloon, the nightclub that the Stevensons owned.
“She said, ‘Joe asked me to keep an eye on the boys.'
Then, one day, a man came into the club and asked Stevenson to pay the damages for a fender bender that involved Jill. “He looks at me and he says, ‘Oh, she wasn't driving.’ I said, 'Her beloved Corvette, she wasn't driving it?’ He goes, 'Senator Biden was driving it.’ Stevenson said.
Stevenson confronted Jill, but “she didn’t say anything” and “just looked at me. I said, ‘You gotta go. You gotta go get your own place"’.
A divorce decree was issued in May 1975. The divorce became contentious when Jill asked for her share of The Stone Balloon, which a judge denied.
Bill Stevenson claims Jill and Joe's relationship actually started in 1974, when he was still married to Jill.
www.insideedition.com