The romance story of President William Ruto and his wife, Rachel Ruto is a beautiful one punctuated with both difficult and happy moments. The couple who will occupy Statehouse as the first family met in the mid ’80s in Sugoi, Turbo Constituency.
Rachel’s family initially lived in Likuyani with the family’s patriarch, Samuel Kimetto eking a living by hawking maize.
According to the Standard, Mr. Kimetto would transport corn from Soy to Eldoret (approximately 20 kilometres) using a bicycle. The family later settled in Sugoi in 1985.
It is Rachel’s elder sister, Lydia Kimetto who introduced Ruto to the former. Lydia was married in 1981 to Ezra Kiplagat.
The family attended the same church with Ruto who approached Lydia Kimetto asking her to connect him with her younger sister.
According to Lydia, she knew her sister as a prayerful and industrious woman who was the best match for Ruto.
However, there was a hurdle in her ‘difficult and almost inapproachable’ nature. She had doubts that Ruto would win her heart.
“I promised Ruto that I would help him get close to her. I had known Ruto as God-fearing and actively involved in youth activities in the church. Rachel was exactly the same.”
“I didn’t know Ruto would actually win my sister’s heart, knowing the kind of person she was, but he did. He was too convincing. He’d promised to do his best,” Kimetto told Standard Digital.
University
While Ruto joined University of Nairobi to pursue Botany, Rachel went to Kenyatta University for a teaching career. The duo’s love blossomed while at the University.
After completing her studies, Rachel was posted as a teacher on practice in Elgeyo Marakwet where Ruto would pay a visit.
“She was posted to Kessup girls for teaching practice and I was generally around and that is where our love history grew from. The rest is history,” Ruto reveals.
Supportive Wife Who Quit Teaching
After their marriage in 1991, Rachel taught briefly but quit the profession to support her husband’s career in politics and business.
As a woman who thrived best away from the limelight, she was generally unknown until Ruto rose to the Office of Deputy President in 2013.
She has been described as a prayer warrior whose lowest moment was when Ruto was implicated in crimes against humanity at the International Criminal Court (ICC). The matter weighed down on her but she remained resilient.
“Rachel often called all her siblings and asked us to pray for her husband and President Kenyatta as they battled their case in The Hague,” recalls Lydia Kimetto.
