America’s highest profile diplomat Henry Kissinger who courted world leaders for decades was also a twice-married father-of-two who leaves behind widow Nancy and children Elizabeth and David

Henry Kissinger, America’s most senior diplomat who courted world leaders for decades, was also a twice-married father of two who left a widow, Nancy, and two children, David and Elizabeth, from his first marriage to Anne Fleischer.

The former secretary of state and titan of American politics died at the home he shared with Nancy (nee Maginness) in Connecticut at the age of 100 on Wednesday.

Kissinger was 50 when he married Nancy in Arlington, Virginia, in 1974, meaning he spent nearly half his life with her.

The couple met at Harvard when he was a professor there and she was a student. They both went on to work for New York Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller before Kissinger joined the Nixon administration in 1969.

But the marriage, which lasted the last 50 years of his life, was not his first.

He first married Anna Fleischer, a high school sweetheart, in 1949, less than four years after he returned from fighting in Germany during World War II.

Together they had two children – David, the president of the Conaco television company, owned by the artist and TV presenter Conan O’Brien, and Elizabeth, who practically did not appear in public.

Fleischer was born in 1925 and, like Kissinger, began life in Fürth, Germany.

Kissinger fled the Bavarian city when he was just 15 for the United States amid the rise of Nazi Germany, and although little is known about Ms. Fleischer, it is assumed that she and her family did the same.

The couple dated in high school and stayed in touch while Kissinger served in the military, for which he fought in Germany against the Nazis.

The couple had two children, Elizabeth and David, but divorced in 1964 after 15 years of marriage.

The reason for the breakdown of Kissinger’s first marriage is unknown, but it followed reports of infidelity.

In 1955, he met the Austrian poet Ingeborg Bachmann during a symposium at Harvard, and the couple began a romantic relationship that lasted several years.

After the divorce, Kissinger’s political positions increased sharply.

After a distinguished career on the Harvard faculty, Kissinger joined Richard Nixon’s administration in 1969 as national security adviser, a position he retained after Nixon resigned and was succeeded as president by Gerald Ford.

He also served as Secretary of State under Nixon and Ford.

During this time, he had a hand in many of the era-changing global events of the 1970s, including the Vietnam War, China’s diplomatic opening, landmark U.S.-Soviet arms control negotiations, and expanding ties between Israel and its Arab neighbors.

His political rise also made him something of a celebrated statesman.

For his loud diplomacy he was nicknamed “sex symbol of the Nixon administration.” Kissinger had a number of glamorous celebrity girlfriends in his younger years, including journalist Diane Sawyer and actress Candice Bergen.

He was the subject of numerous magazine reports, was forced to deny an affair with glamor actress Jill St. John, the Bond girl in Diamonds Are Forever, and was pictured with beauties such as Elizabeth Taylor, Lana Turner and Raquel Welch.

Kissinger even earned the nickname “secret swinger” after a Washington Post reporter cheekily asked him at a party if he was a swinger.

He later explained: “I told her, ‘I can’t admit I’m a swinger without getting in trouble.’ I can’t admit that I’m not a swinger, so why don’t we say that I’m a secret swinger?”

The political colossus also became friends with Hugh Hefner (earning himself another nickname as the “Playboy of the West Wing”), who gave him a subscription to his magazine after learning that Kissinger showed up to a party with an envelope full of classified information, but told everyone that it was instead a copy of Playboy.

He even once declared that “power is the greatest aphrodisiac,” and there may have been some truth to that: in a survey of Playboy bunnies, he topped the list of men they would “most like to go on a date with.” In 1974, the Miss Universe contestants named him “the greatest man in the world.”

But his swinging days soon came to an end.

In March 1974, he married Nancy Maginness, a New York socialite.

The tall, blonde Nancy was 39 years old at the time and was recommended to Gov. Nelson Rockefeller in 1964 by Kissinger, then a Harvard professor.

Her first job was as a Kissinger researcher on the Rockefeller task force.

According to a New York Times report on the marriage, the wedding was known only to then-former Governor Rockefeller, who interrupted a speech he was giving in Chicago.

“I have news for you,” he said. “Today Kissinger marries Nancy Maginnes.”

Although Kissinger joined the Nixon administration, Nancy still worked for Rockefeller. The State Department later confirmed the marriage.

‘Mrs. Albert Bristol Maginness announces the wedding of his daughter Nancy Sharon to Henry Alfred Kissinger in Arlington, Virginia on March 30, 1974,” the statement reads. “The couple left immediately after the ceremony for their honeymoon in Acapulco.”

Kissinger died Wednesday at his home in Kent, Connecticut.

In announcing his death, a statement from Kissinger Associates said Kissinger “will be laid to rest at a private family service.” A memorial service will be held later in New York. In lieu of flowers, the family suggests that donations be considered.”