Doria Palmieri, also known as Doria Palmieri Reagan, was an American clinical psychologist best known as the first wife of Ron Reagan, the younger son of President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan. She and Ron married in New York in November 1980 and remained married for more than 33 years, until her death on March 24, 2014.
Palmieri’s surviving documentary record is more substantial than a simple “president’s daughter-in-law” description suggests. Contemporary reporting identifies her as a literary researcher around the time of her marriage; she later worked at Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine and became a psychologist. She and Ron eventually settled in Seattle, where they lived for many years and had no children.
Doria Palmieri at a glance
| Detail | Documented information |
|---|---|
| Name | Doria Palmieri; also Doria Palmieri Reagan |
| Profession | Clinical psychologist; earlier described as a literary researcher |
| Spouse | Ron Reagan |
| Marriage | November 24, 1980 |
| Wedding location | New York City |
| Long-term residence | Seattle, Washington |
| Children | None |
| Died | March 24, 2014 |
| Age at death | 62 |
| Cause of death | Complications from a progressive neuromuscular disease |
The marriage is also recorded by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, which lists Doria Palmieri as Ron Reagan’s spouse from 1980 until her death in 2014.
What did Doria Palmieri do professionally?
Palmieri’s career appears to have changed significantly across her adult life.
A Time profile published shortly after Ronald Reagan’s 1980 presidential election described the 29-year-old Palmieri as a literary researcher.
There is also unusually specific evidence connecting her to Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. Writing in Vanity Fair in 2016, former Interview editor Bob Colacello said Palmieri’s niece and nephew remembered stories from the period when Doria had worked as his assistant at the magazine in the early 1980s.
John O’Connor, who also worked at Interview, separately recalled working alongside Doria and described her role there as a contributing editor and secretary to Colacello.
By her later years, however, reliable sources identify Palmieri as a psychologist or clinical psychologist. A 2011 Washington Post profile described her as a psychologist who was still working despite receiving treatment for a degenerative illness. Ron Reagan told the Los Angeles Times after her death that she had been a clinical psychologist.
This chronology is more firmly supported than some online biographies that supply detailed educational credentials without citing institutional or contemporary records.
How Doria Palmieri met Ron Reagan
A 2011 Washington Post profile reported that Palmieri and Ron Reagan met at a Los Angeles dance studio. The couple’s connection to dance fits the circumstances of Ron’s early career: he had left Yale University and pursued professional ballet, joining the Joffrey II Dancers. The Reagan Presidential Library also records his participation in Joffrey II in 1976.
Contemporary reporting indicates that Palmieri and Reagan had known one another for several years before marrying. A Washington Post report published at the time of the wedding said they had known each other for four years and had lived together for more than a year.
Palmieri was seven years older than Ron, according to both the 2011 Washington Post profile and Ron’s 2014 comments to the Los Angeles Times.
Their private New York wedding in 1980
Doria Palmieri and Ron Reagan married on November 24, 1980, only weeks after Ronald Reagan won the presidential election.
The later Washington Post account dates the wedding to November 24 and notes that it occurred 20 days after Reagan’s father was elected president. Rather than staging a high-profile political-family wedding, Doria and Ron went to a judge’s office in New York. According to Ron’s account, they had expected to obtain a marriage license, but the judge proposed marrying them immediately to avoid a media spectacle. A Secret Service agent served as a witness.
Contemporary Washington Post coverage described the event as a private civil ceremony in a Manhattan judge’s chambers. Ronald and Nancy Reagan did not attend. The report said the couple had decided to marry only about a week or week and a half earlier.
That timing also corrects a mistake repeated on some websites: Doria and Ron did not marry after Ronald Reagan had been sworn in as president. They married in November 1980, after his election but before his January 1981 inauguration. The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library independently places the marriage in 1980.
Life during and after the Reagan presidency
Palmieri’s marriage put her inside one of America’s most recognizable political families, but she and Ron did not build their lives primarily around Washington politics.
Photographic archives place the couple together at cultural events during the 1980s, including a Joffrey Ballet gala and a 1987 Carnegie Hall performance.
Their relationship with Ronald and Nancy Reagan was not entirely smooth at first. Ron told The Washington Post that his parents initially had reservations about Doria, although he said the relationship improved later.
The couple eventually left Los Angeles for Seattle. The Los Angeles Times reported in 2014 that Ron had lived in Seattle since leaving Los Angeles in 1994, while the 2011 Washington Post profile described the couple as having settled into their Seattle home roughly 16 years earlier. Taken together, the accounts place their move in the mid-1990s.
Did Doria Palmieri and Ron Reagan have children?
No. A detailed 2011 profile of the couple reported that Doria Palmieri and Ron Reagan had no children. At the time, they shared their Seattle home with three cats.
The same point was later reported by the Los Angeles Times in its coverage of Ron Reagan’s personal life.
This distinction matters because some low-quality biography and genealogy pages incorrectly mix Ron Reagan’s family details with those of other members of the Reagan family.
Doria Palmieri’s illness
Palmieri developed a serious degenerative condition during the final years of her life.
In January 2011, The Washington Post visited Palmieri and Ron in Seattle and reported that she was undergoing treatment at a University of Washington hospital for what was then described as a mysterious degenerative illness. The reporter observed Palmieri walking with assistance and using a crutch, while also noting that she continued to work as a psychologist.
After her death, Ron provided a more specific description. He told the Los Angeles Times that Doria had suffered from a progressive neuromuscular disease for approximately seven and a half years. The published account did not identify a specific diagnosis.
Claims that assign her a more specific disease should therefore not be treated as established unless supported by additional medical or family documentation.
When did Doria Palmieri die?
Doria Palmieri Reagan died on March 24, 2014, at age 62.
Ron Reagan disclosed the date and circumstances in a May 2014 interview with the Los Angeles Times, saying she had died from complications of the progressive neuromuscular disease. The newspaper described them as having been married for 33 years.
Bob Colacello also recorded Palmieri’s age as 62 and the cause as complications from a progressive neuromuscular disease when writing about the Reagan family for Vanity Fair in 2016.
The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library likewise records the end of Ron’s marriage to Palmieri with her death in 2014.
Was Doria Palmieri born in 1951?
Doria Palmieri was approximately 29 when she married in November 1980, according to contemporary reporting, and she was 62 when she died in March 2014. Those figures are compatible with a birth in 1951 or early 1952, depending on the date used.
Some online databases give September 13, 1951 as her exact date of birth. One source traces that information to data reportedly supplied by Palmieri to an astrologer and later relayed to the database. Because that is not the same evidentiary standard as an official birth record or contemporaneous institutional document, the exact date should be treated cautiously rather than repeated as conclusively verified.
The stronger published record establishes her approximate age but does not require an exact birth date to identify her correctly.
What is reliably known about Doria Palmieri’s education?
Several newer biography pages claim specific information about Palmieri’s university education and graduate training. The higher-quality sources reviewed for this article clearly document her later profession as a clinical psychologist, but they do not provide enough primary or institutional documentation to verify every degree, school and graduation date commonly repeated online.
For that reason, it is safer to distinguish her documented profession from educational details that still need stronger sourcing.
Doria Palmieri’s place in the Reagan family story
Palmieri’s historical significance is not that she pursued elected office or became a major public figure herself. Her life intersects with the Reagan story through a long marriage that began during the extraordinary transition between Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election victory and his presidency.
But the surviving record also shows a life beyond that connection. Palmieri worked in publishing during the early 1980s, including at Interview magazine, and later established a career in psychology. She and Ron built a comparatively private life in Seattle and remained together through the illness that affected her final years.
The most defensible biography of Doria Palmieri is therefore a relatively concise one: a literary and magazine worker who became a clinical psychologist, married Ron Reagan in 1980, lived with him for more than three decades, and died in 2014 after a progressive neuromuscular illness.
Sources
The strongest sources for this biography include the official Ronald Reagan Presidential Library family record, which documents Ron Reagan’s marriage to Palmieri; The Washington Post’s 2011 profile of Ron and Doria Reagan, which contains first-hand reporting from their Seattle life; and the Los Angeles Times interview with Ron Reagan after Doria’s death.
Vanity Fair’s account by Bob Colacello is particularly useful for Palmieri’s connection with Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine.
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