As her husband campaigned relentlessly to become the next mayor of Los Angeles, Corina Villaraigosa found herself surprisingly calm -- at first.
She had been through this before with Antonio -- a successful council race two years ago, a heartbreaking loss for mayor in 2001, a heady win in the state Assembly that launched his political career. Always poised and reserved, Corina, 47, knew the drill. Or at least she thought she did.
The morning after her husband won the election, panic set in.
"I woke up, and that's when it hit," she said. "I remember thinking, 'Oh, my God!' "
The shy schoolteacher -- a sylph with huge brown eyes -- wanted to stay in the shadow of her husband's glare. She quickly realized, however, that she was in the spotlight as well.
"When I started thinking about the impact it was going to have on me, it was a little daunting," she said.
For years she has been her husband's calming force. She's attended to their children while working full time across town in Montebello. She filled their home in Mount Washington with colorful folk art and painted the walls a vibrant yellow. She's kept everything in order, even down to Villaraigosa's shirts (dozens of them perfectly pressed and hung, according to color, in a small upstairs closet).
She has provided the domestic foundation that allows her husband to endure the chaos that has become his outside life. Her 52-year-old husband, in turn, still awes her with the sweep of his accomplishments and the power of his personality.
"He's so bubbly, so lively, so happy," she said.
Corina is well schooled on how to keep the family together. But it is the public demands of her new job that have caught her by surprise.
Unlike presidential first ladies, who are seasoned by years of national attention and coached by large staffs, mayoral spouses are left to figure out their roles largely on their own. There are no guidebooks, no protocols and really no firm expectations.
Each must find her own style.
Ethel Bradley held teas and attended Dodger games with her girlfriends. In the afternoons, she puttered around her garden at the Getty House, the mayor's mansion in Windsor Square. Once asked by a Times reporter in 1992 about his wife's low profile, Tom Bradley responded: "Her feeling is she has given her husband to public service. That doesn't mean that she now has to give herself."
