Chelsea Clinton, Marc Mezvinsky to wed

Two political families - both steeped in public accomplishment and personal controversy - are to be united in matrimony next summer.

Former First Daughter Chelsea Clinton, 29, and Marc Mezvinsky, 31, a Main Line product whose parents both served in Congress, have ended months of speculation by announcing their engagement.

Mezvinsky, an investment banker, is the son of Edward M. Mezvinsky, a former Iowa congressman and Pennsylvania Democratic Party chair, and Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky, who represented Montgomery County in Congress in the early 1990s.

Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky became engaged before Thanksgiving, a Clinton family spokesman said, and alerted family and friends over the holidays by e-mail.

"We're sorry for the mass e-mail but we wanted to wish everyone a belated Happy Thanksgiving!" their Friday morning message said. "We also wanted to share that we are engaged!

"We didn't get married this past summer despite the stories to the contrary, but we are looking toward next summer and hope you all will be there to celebrate with us. Happy Holidays! Chelsea & Marc."

No date or place for a wedding was announced. The couple spent much of last summer denying rumors that they would wed in August on Martha's Vineyard.

The Clintons and Mezvinskys have long been political allies and friends.

In 1993, Margolies-Mezvinsky, then a freshman Democrat from Montgomery County, cast the vote that got President Bill Clinton's controversial tax package through the House of Representatives.

It also all but guaranteed that the first Democrat elected to Congress from Montgomery County in more than 70 years would have no second term.

"She earned an honored place in history, with a vote she shouldn't have had to cast," Bill Clinton wrote in My Life, his 2004 memoir.

On a darker note, federal prosecutors said Ed Mezvinsky habitually dropped the Clintons' names and boasted of their friendship during the 1990s as he defrauded friends, family members, and institutions out of more than $10 million.

Ed Mezvinsky was sentenced in 2003 to serve 80 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to a massive fraud that prosecutors said amounted to a Ponzi scheme. He was released from custody in April 2008, but remains under federal probation supervision.

Both he and his wife were forced into bankruptcy, and they quietly divorced in 2007, court records show.

Margolies-Mezvinsky was not implicated in any wrongdoing, but the scandal effectively ended her political ambitions. She founded and remains at the helm of Women's Campaign International, a nonprofit dedicated to the political empowerment of women.

She did not respond to requests for comment on the engagement yesterday. A spokesman for the bride-to-be's mother, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, said it wouldn't be right for him to comment.

Hillary Clinton's aides, citing Chelsea's privacy, also declined to disclose such details as whether she had received an engagement ring. It will be an interfaith marriage; Mezvinsky is Jewish, while Clinton grew up attending the United Methodist church with her mother. Bill Clinton is a Southern Baptist.

Chelsea Clinton and Marc Mezvinsky have been friends since they were teens.

As long ago as 1997, their bond was rumored to have influenced her decision to attend Stanford University, where Mezvinsky was enrolled.

In an interview at the time, Margolies-Mezvinsky described her son as a sweet and sensitive young man protective of Chelsea's privacy, but doubted that he had swayed her collegiate plans.

"I don't think so - I think she's too smart for that," Margolies-Mezvinsky said. "This is a real lifetime decision."

As was last week's announcement.

The couple live in New York City, where Chelsea Clinton is pursuing a graduate degree at Columbia University's School of Public Health and Marc Mezvinsky works at G3 Capital, a hedge fund.

The groom-to-be grew up in a 15-room Main Line home, one of the 11 children, stepchildren and adopted children of the Mezvinskys.

His mother, an Emmy Award-winning network reporter for NBC, drew attention in the 1970s by adopting two foreign children as a single woman. She chronicled the experience in a book, They Came to Stay.

In 1975 she married Ed Mezvinsky, a tall, charming, divorced father of four daughters whom she met when he served as a Democratic congressman from Iowa.

Ed Mezvinsky went on to serve as a U.N. official, ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate and Pennsylvania attorney general, and served five years as state Democratic Committee chairman.

By 1992, however, his wife had claimed the political spotlight. A political novice, Margolies-Mezvinsky narrowly won a chance to represent Montgomery County in Congress, swept in along with Bill Clinton's victory over President George H.W. Bush.

But her star soon dimmed when she cast the vote that saved Clinton's tax bill, outraging voters back home.

By 2000, she was attempting a comeback, running for a U.S. Senate seat, when she abruptly dropped out, citing the financial strain on her family. Within weeks, she and her husband had filed for bankruptcy - and he was charged with fraud.

"What can one say," she had remarked after her husband's sentencing. "You're profoundly sad."

Today, at least, the family's news is happy.