First marriage and volunteering

In the later part of World War II, she was a driver in the Women's Volunteer Service.^[1]

In 1948 she married James Slater Murphy,^[1][3] a virologist associated with the Rockefeller Institute and a close friend of Nelson Rockefeller's. They had four children: James B. Murphy, II, Margaretta Harrison Murphy, Carol Slater Murphy, and Malinda Fitler Murphy (1960–2005). Malinda married Francis Menotti, the adopted son of composer Gian Carlo Menotti.

In 1958, Happy signed up to serve as a volunteer on Nelson Rockefeller's gubernatorial campaign. The following year she became the newly elected governor's private secretary,^[1] then resigned from his office staff in 1961. Happy and her husband divorced on April 1, 1963, for reasons The New York Times called "grievous mental anguish" and her former husband's lawyer classified as "irreconcilable differences".

Second marriage and 1964 presidential campaign

She married New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller^[3][7] on May 4, 1963, at the home of Laurance S. Rockefeller in Pocantico Hills, New York. Rockefeller was eighteen years her senior and had divorced his first wife, Mary Todhunter Clark, on March 16, 1962. Happy and Nelson Rockefeller went on to have two sons together: Nelson Rockefeller Jr. (born 1964), and Mark Rockefeller (born 1967).

There has been speculation surrounding Malinda Fitler Menotti, the youngest daughter of Happy Rockefeller and Dr. James Slater Murphy, with many in the Rockefeller inner circle believing her to be Nelson Rockefeller's daughter. In his diary, Rockefeller intimate Ken Riland used a tone of knowing irony when mentioning Malinda, putting the word stepfather in quotes. Ellen, the wife of Wallace Harrison, the architect and Nelson Rockefeller confidant, claimed that Malinda's parentage was an open secret among Rockefeller associates.^[8]

Nelson Rockefeller first campaigned for president in 1964, during which time he remained governor of New York, and Happy remained first lady of New York.^[1] According to The Independent, she was pregnant with her son Nelson Aldrich Jr. during the 1964 campaign, and made "a fine candidate's wife on the campaign trail."^[1] However, political pundits "blamed the marriage for Nelson Rockefeller's failure to secure the 1964 Republican presidential nomination," as at that time, no divorced candidate had secured the US presidency.^[3] As the British journalist Lady Jeanne Campbell wrote in the London Evening Standard, when the Murphy-Rockefeller involvement became a subject of media scrutiny after the announcement of Rockefeller's filing for divorce from his first wife and Happy Murphy's resignation from his staff, "Already people are comparing Happy Murphy to the Duchess of Windsor when she was plain Mrs. Simpson."^[9] More damaging still was the political fallout for Rockefeller. Echoing the party-wide concerns, an official of the Michigan Republican Party told The New York Times that the couple's potential marriage likely would cost Rockefeller the 1964 presidential nomination. "The rapidity of it all—he gets a divorce, she gets a divorce—and the indication of the break-up of two homes. Our country doesn't like broken homes."^[10] Nelson began to drop in the polls and withdrew from the race after losing several primaries, with the election going to Lyndon Johnson after Rockefeller was replaced as the Republican front-runner by Barry Goldwater.^[1]

1968 US presidential campaign

Happy and Nelson Rockefeller campaigning in Florida, August 1968

In 1968, she accompanied her husband on the campaign trail as he again ran for US president. Women's Wear Daily quoted Norman Norell, whose clothes she wore on the campaign trail, as stating "she has that good family, Ivy League look. She will always look right — never gussied up, never silly. She is not interested in excitement for excitement's sake." She also wore designs by Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass, Chanel, Grès, Dior, Valentino and Donald Brooks.^[11] WWD also noted that she was "known for relaxed charm" and frankness, with the latter to such a point that his 1968 campaign had an internal rule that she was not to be quoted directly.^[11] Rockefeller lost the campaign, with Richard Nixon taking the White House.^[1]

According to Richard Norton Smith, Nelson's biographer, Happy's "quiet advocacy, first with her husband" and then with New York State Senate president Earl Brydges helped bring about the 1970 repeal of New York's abortion ban.^[2]

First Lady of New York

Her husband was reelected governor of New York two more times after that.^[11] Rockefeller stepped down as governor of New York in 1973, after serving three terms.^[1]

After discovering tumors in a self-inspection, she underwent surgery on October 17, 1974, in an operation that was described in a news conference by her doctor, Jerome Urban of Memorial Hospital for Cancer and Allied Diseases, and her husband. Both President Ford and Henry Kissinger, then Secretary of State, phoned the families with best wishes after the announcement. The operation was reported on in detail by publications such as The New York Times. ^[12] According to WWD, the combination of Happy Rockefeller and Betty Ford, as well as Shirley Temple, coming public about their cancer treatments helped raise awareness of a disease that had been extremely stigmatized.^[11]

Second Lady of the United States

After the Watergate scandal in 1974, Gerald Ford named Nelson Rockefeller to serve as his vice president.^[3] She became the Second Lady of the United States when her husband became the vice president of Gerald Ford.^[11] For the term, the couple moved to Washington, D.C., where they entertained in the vice president's mansion, but lived in their own house.^[11] Over the years, the couple also maintained residences in Seal Harbor, Maine, Venezuela, and Manhattan, where they had an apartment^[11] on Fifth Avenue designed by Jean-Michel Frank.^[13] They also lived at the 3,000-acred family estate in Pocantico Hills, New York,^[11] named Kykuit.^[2]

Her husband died in January 1979, two years after having left the vice presidency.^[1] She continued to entertain at 812 Fifth Avenue, as well as the Rockefeller estate the Japanese House.^[2] In 1982, Happy Rockefeller hosted an event at her Fifth Avenue apartment for Henry Kissinger, celebrating the publication of the second volume of his memoirs. At the time, Happy said she and Kissinger had been friends since around 1962.^[14]

In 1985, she loaned a tapestry of Picasso's anti-war themed Guernica to the UN, and after a year of cleaning and preservation, it hangs again since 2022 outside the Security Council chambers.^[15] In 1991, she was appointed a public delegate to the United Nations by US President George HW Bush. She also became president of the board of the Saratoga Performing Arts Center north Albany, New York.^[2][3] She supported the Philadelphia Orchestra's annual visits to China, as well as the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park in New York City, the Central Park Conservancy, and Historic Hudson Valley.^[3]

Her residence in Pocantico Hills, Kykuit, was given to the National Trust for Historic Preservation and in 1994 was opened to the public.^[11] She afterwards moved into the Japanese House estate.^[2]