 | This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. (March 2011) |
Lydie Marland | |
|---|---|
 Lydie Marland by Jo Davidson | |
| First Lady of Oklahoma | |
| In office 1935–1939 | |
| Governor | E. W. Marland |
| Preceded by | Mary Alice Hearrell Murray |
| Succeeded by | Myrtle Ellenberger Phillips |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Lyde Miller Roberts April 20, 1900 Flourtown, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Died | July 25, 1987 (aged 87) |
| Spouse | Ernest Whitworth Marland |
Lydie Marland (April 20, 1900 – July 25, 1987), an American socialite, was born Lyde Miller Roberts in Flourtown, Pennsylvania, the second child of Margaret Reynolds (Collins) and George Frederick Roberts. Her parents decided to give up her and her brother for adoption as teenagers by their maternal aunt and uncle, Virginia and Ernest Whitworth Marland, who were both childless and fabulously wealthy from his success in the oil business in Ponca City, Oklahoma.
Two years after Virginia Marland died in 1926, E. W. annulled the adoption of Lydie Roberts Marland. They married that year, when she was 28 and he was 54. Lydie Roberts Marland enjoyed volatile times and drastic changes in fortune with her husband: he lost much of his money in 1928; she accompanied him to Washington, DC after he was elected to the US Congress in 1932, and to the Oklahoma governor's mansion as his First Lady in 1934.
After his gubernatorial term, they lived in the chauffeur's cottage of their former mansion and sold the big house and grounds. Following his death in 1941, Lydie Marland became more reclusive. In the 1950s, she disappeared from Oklahoma for more than a decade. She returned to Ponca City for her later years, and succeeded in having the Marlands' Palace on the Prairies purchased and preserved by the city.