Tabloid turns Mitt Romney ‘Dear John’ letter from future wife into ‘love triangle shocker’

By Globe Staff

Mitt Romney’s political celebrity has taken an unlikely turn with a sensational-sounding entry in a gossip tabloid.

``Mitt Romney love triangle shocker!’’ screams a headline posted online by the National Enquirer.

The supermarket check-out publication reports – with salacious spin – how Ann Romney wrote to her future husband while he was a Mormon missionary in France and informed him she was developing feelings for another young man back in Utah.

The Enquirer begins its tale by citing an anecdote in “The Real Romney,” a new book by Boston Globe reporters. But is the biographical tale a ``shocker’’? That is definitely a stretch.

Here is what happened:

Romney had informally asked Ann to marry him in 1965 when they were both in high school, but that had not been formalized. In the fall of 1968, while Romney was serving as a Mormon missionary in France, Ann Davies was attending Brigham Young University in Utah. It had been two years since Mitt Romney had started his mission, and it was common for missionaries to receive “Dear John” break-up letters from girlfriends back home. Ann wrote Mitt a letter saying she had experienced feelings for a student named Kim Cameron; he had reminded her of Romney.

Romney said later that the letter was “terrifying…I went, `Oh my goodness, this is it!’ ” A fellow missionary, Dane McBride, later said that Romney was so distraught “he was just kind of worthless.” Cameron is quoted in “The Real Romney” as saying it’s “probably right” that he thought for a time he might marry Ann, adding, “emotionally, I felt very close to her.” Cameron gave a similar quote to the Enquirer.

Romney wrote letters to Ann beseeching her to wait for him, and he soon returned home and formalized the marriage proposal, to which she promptly agreed. Cameron went on to marry another woman from BYU.

The Globe first published the recollections about it by Romney and Cameron in its 2007 series about the presidential candidate, noting how deeply Romney was in love with his future wife. The Romney campaign did not immediately respond to a query about how it views the Enquirer’s characterization as a “shocker” that has rocked Romney. Cameron could not be reached for comment.