Gingrich approached Jackie about a divorce in April 1980, while she was recovering from the first of three surgeries for cancer. In her only interview, with the Washington Post, she recounted that he left in “spring 1980″ and presented her with divorce terms after her third surgery while at the hospital that September. “He can say that we had been talking about it for 10 years, but the truth is that it came as a complete surprise,” she told the Post.