U.S. Wife of Greek Premier Denies Rumors of Divorce

The American-born wife of Greek Premier Andreas Papandreou says she is not planning to divorce her husband of 36 years.

Margaret Papandreou was responding to Greek and U.S. news reports that she planned to return to the United States and file for divorce because of the premier’s dalliance with a 33-year-old Greek flight attendant.

“Marriages pass through crises, especially long marriages, and ours is no exception,” Margaret Papandreou, 64, told the newspaper Messimvrini on Monday.

“Is this crisis enough to dissolve a relationship that’s lasted 40 years and a marriage that’s lasted 36?” she asked.

The former Margaret Chant, from Elmhurst, Ill., met her husband when he was an economics professor at the University of Minnesota.

They married in 1951 and have three sons and a daughter. The eldest son, George, 34, is a member of Parliament.

Rumors of a breakup in the Papandreou family swept Athens last month after the 68-year-old premier was seen in a luxury Athens restaurant with Dimitra Liani-Kapopoulou, an Olympic Airways flight attendant.

The socialist premier later was censured in the press for taking a weekend cruise in her company instead of attending functions to mark the anniversary of a disastrous 1986 earthquake in Kalamata.

Dimitra Liani-Kapopoulou is married to an architect who works for the government.