But after she left the White House as she nursed Reagan through his ten-year descent into Alzheimer’s disease until his death in 2004 America softened its view of the former movie starlet.
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She will be buried at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, alongside her husband.
The cause of death was congestive heart failure, said a spokeswoman for the Reagan presidential library.
She married Ronald Reagan, the then-president of the Screen Actors Guild, in 1952, and the pair would go on to become an influential couple in the public sphere.
“She was a constant source of support and strength for our parents and our family, and we remain grateful to her and President Reagan for their decades of friendship”.
Nancy Reagan is survived by Patti Davis and Ron Reagan – her two children with Ronald Reagan – and Michael Reagan, a son from Ronald Reagan’s first marriage to Jane Wyman.
“Stepson Michael Reagantweeted: “I am saddened by the passing of my stepmother Nancy Reagan…”
“Meanwhile, former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who is a Democratic presidential hopeful, said: “Nancy was an extraordinary woman: a gracious first lady, proud mother and devoted wife to President Reagan – her Ronnie”.
“That it is probably the worst disease you can ever have”, she replied.
Her substantial influence within the White House came to light slowly in her husband’s second term.
After the wedding, Nancy Reagan appeared in only a few more films, including “Hellcats of the Navy” (1957), which also featured her husband. – George W. Bush, former US president.
Mrs. Reagan became the ultimate wife of substance after her husband’s presidency, as she selflessly cared for him while Alzheimer’s took its toll and bravely, publicly bucked their Republican Party’s opposition to stem-cell research in hopes of finding a cure. Her mother married Chicago neurosurgeon Loyal Davis when the future first lady was young. “I will always remember her as a dear friend and patriot and as one-half of a love story that Hollywood couldn’t have written any better”.
She visited prevention and rehabilitation centers, and in 1985 she held a conference at the White House for First Ladies of 17 countries to focus global attention on this problem.
“I sat near #Nancy Reagan once and felt like a teenager seeing one of my idols”. She noted I had been present for numerous high and lows of her life and her husband’s, and she thanked me for my professionalism.
Asked what she did when her husband didn’t recognize visitors, she replied: “Well, now we don’t have visitors… we never let that happen”.
From the minute they moved back to California, Mrs. Reagan guarded their privacy.
Added CNN chief political analyst Gloria Borger, “Her real role was to protect her husband and to make sure everyone around him was on the same page….”
“Ronald Reagan was a striver, but his striving was masked by his courteous, amiable manner and enduring fatalism”, biographer Lou Cannon wrote in “President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime”.
“I really didn’t think that he would have made it to the presidency without her”. She spent many hours visiting veterans, the elderly, and the emotionally and physically handicapped.
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“When I said, ‘Just say no, ‘ it was an answer to a question by a child in a classroom”, she told CNN’s Larry King.
