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Wife of Benigno Aquino Jr.

After graduating from college, she returned to the Philippines and studied law at Far Eastern University in 1953. While attending, she met Benigno "Ninoy" S. Aquino Jr., who was the son of the late Speaker Benigno S. Aquino Sr. and a grandson of General Servillano Aquino. She discontinued her law education and married Benigno at the Our Lady of Sorrows Parish in Pasay, Rizal on October 11, 1954. The couple had five children: Maria Elena ("Ballsy"; born 1955), Aurora Corazon ("Pinky"; born 1957), Benigno Simeon III ("Noynoy"; 1960–2021), Victoria Elisa ("Viel"; born 1961) and Kristina Bernadette ("Kris"; born 1971).

Aquino had initially had difficulty adjusting to provincial life when she and her husband moved to Concepcion, Tarlac in 1955. Aquino found herself bored in Concepcion, and welcomed the opportunity to have dinner with her husband inside the American military facility at nearby Clark Field. Afterwards, the Aquino family moved to a bungalow in suburban Quezon City.

Throughout her life, Aquino was known to be a devout Roman Catholic.

Corazon Aquino was fluent in French, Japanese, Spanish, and English aside from her native Tagalog and Kapampangan.

Benigno Aquino Jr., a member of the Liberal Party, rose to become the youngest governor in the country in 1961 and then the youngest senator ever elected to the Senate of the Philippines in 1967. For most of her husband's political career, Aquino remained a housewife who raised their children and hosted her spouse's political allies who would visit their Quezon City home. She would decline to join her husband on stage during campaign rallies, instead preferring to be in the back of the audience and listen to him. Unbeknownst to many at the time, Corazon Aquino sold some of her prized inheritance to fund the candidacy of her husband.

As Benigno Aquino Jr. emerged as a leading critic of the government of President Ferdinand Marcos, he became seen as a strong candidate for president to succeed Marcos in the 1973 elections. However, Marcos, who was barred by the 1935 Constitution to seek a third term, declared martial law on September 21, 1972 and later abolished the constitution, thereby allowing him to remain in office. Benigno Aquino Jr. was among the first to be arrested at the onset of martial law, and was later sentenced to death. During her husband's incarceration, Corazon Aquino stopped going to beauty salons or buying new clothes and prohibited her children from attending parties, until a priest advised her and her children to try to live as normal lives as possible.

Despite Corazon's initial opposition, Benigno Aquino Jr. decided to run in the 1978 Batasang Pambansa elections from his prison cell as party leader of the newly created LABAN. Corazon Aquino campaigned on behalf of her husband and delivered a political speech for the first time in her life during this political campaign. In 1980 Benigno Aquino Jr. suffered a heart attack, and Marcos allowed Senator Aquino and his family to leave for exile in the United States upon intervention from U.S. President Jimmy Carter so that Aquino could seek medical treatment. The family settled in Boston, and Corazon Aquino would later recall the next three years as the happiest days of her marriage and family life.

On August 21, 1983, Benigno Aquino Jr. ended his stay in the United States and returned without his family to the Philippines, where he was immediately assassinated on a staircase leading to the tarmac of Manila International Airport. The airport is now named Ninoy Aquino International Airport, renamed by the Congress in his honor in 1987. Corazon Aquino returned to the Philippines a few days later and led her husband's funeral procession, in which more than two million people participated.