The wife of Rep. George Radanovich (R-Calif.), Ethelinde “Ethie” Weaver Radanovich, died Friday in northern Virginia after a three-year fight with ovarian cancer. She was 50. The Congressman announced in December that he wouldn’t run for re-election so he could spend more time with his ailing wife.

The pair met in Washington, D.C., through a college friend of Radanovich’s. A native Oklahoman, Weaver was a political consultant who had worked for the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the firm Woodward & McDowell. The Congressman proposed to his wife in the summer of 1996, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

“In four-starred Chez Michel restaurant, Republican Congr. George Radanovich of Mariposa was on his less famous knees, proposing wedlock to campaign consultant Ethie Weaver,” the paper recounted at the time. “She played it so coy that he was up and down like a yo-yo in an elevator till the other diners demanded a decision.”

They married in Mariposa in November 1996, and in 1998 she gave birth to their only son, King, now 11. In January 2007, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

“Ethie was the love of my life,” Radanovich said in a statement released by his office Friday. “Her smile would light up a room and her boundless energy brought joy and beauty to everyone she met.”

Memorial services will be held in Mariposa and Alexandria, Va.