She met Jeb Bush in 1970 in León when she was 16 years old and he was 17. He was teaching English as a second language and assisting in the building of a school in a small village outside of León, Guanajuato, Mexico, (the village of Ibarrilla) as part of a class at Andover called Man and Society.
They were married on February 23, 1974, in Austin, Texas at the chapel in the Catholic student center on the campus of the University of Texas. At the time of the wedding, she did not speak English; therefore, a part of the wedding ceremony was conducted in Spanish.