Eleanor married Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin Roosevelt, a distant relative of Eleanor's, started courting her soon after she arrived back in New York, and on March 17, 1905, they were wed in the Big Apple. On the day of her wedding, President Theodore Roosevelt escorted Eleanor down the aisle. TR once wrote, "I love Eleanor as much as if she were my daughter." A few months into his second administration, on March 17, 1905, the president gave Eleanor away on her wedding day. Later, TR teased her new husband (as well as his cousin), "Well, Franklin, there's nothing like keeping the name in the family." Since she was more serious than her husband and didn't share his sense of humor, she frequently remarked that he needed to find other people to share his enjoyment with. Eleanor gave birth to six children between 1906 and 1916, one of them passed from infancy.

The family relocated to Albany after Franklin was elected to the New York Senate in 1911, and Eleanor began her career as a political spouse there. Eleanor spent the following several years carrying out the social responsibilities required of an "official wife," including attending formal parties and paying social calls in other government officials' houses when Franklin was appointed assistant secretary of the navy in 1913. She generally considered these events boring, eventually describing them as "utter agony".