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(CNN) – Despite John Edwards' extramarital affair that rocked his marriage, his wife described their union as a "love story," albeit an unconventional one.

Elizabeth Edwards told WJLA-TV in Washington late last week that she wants her marriage to work, and that her husband has been supportive as she continues to battle breast cancer.

"John said, 'Perhaps not the great love story that we hoped, but maybe a great love story nonetheless," she said.

Edwards added: "'Til death do you part, because that's what I want."

Though Elizabeth promised to soldier on, she acknowledged the grim reality of trying to overcome terminal cancer.

"Cancer will probably win," she said. "Why would I give it any more days than it may already take? That's the choice I make."

(CNN) - Elizabeth Edwards, a vigorous proponent of health care reform and the wife of former presidential candidate John Edwards, is putting politics aside in her new job.

Edwards officially opened a furniture store in Chapel Hill over the weekend, something she has long wanted to do.

"My mother had a charity store when I was growing up where she got Japanese antiques and sold them," Edwards told CNN affiliate WTVD.

The store, called Red Window, sells a variety of antique pieces at discount prices, Edwards said.

"I try to go to High Point and buy good things at a great price," she told WTVD. "Sometimes that means I've got to buy a lot of them, but then pass the good price along to customers here in Chapel Hill."

John Edwards was also on hand for the store's opening, but refused to answer questions about his political future or the ongoing controversy surrounding his affair onetime campaign aide Rielle Hunter.

Earlier: Elizabeth Edwards says she expects paternity test

"[I am] doing the things I need to do with my family, helping Elizabeth, support what she's doing here," he said.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth Edwards dismissed the latest reports on the matter as "tabloid news."

"Tabloid news is tabloid news," she told the station. "We just have a family to run and now a business to run as well, so we just keep our eye on that ball and try to ignore what supermarket tabloids have to say."

(CNN) - Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, told CNN she believes a DNA test will be conducted to confirm the paternity of the child of Rielle Hunter, with whom her husband conducted an affair.

"My expectation is that at some point, something happens, and I hope for the sake of this child that it happens, you know, in a quiet way," she told CNN's Larry King Wednesday night.

John Edwards originally denied that he was the father of 18-month-old Frances, but has not denied recent reports that he may soon make a formal statement conceding his paternity.

His wife told King Wednesday that life continued as usual in the Edwards household. "Things are going fine. We are getting the children ready for a new school year, everything seems to be going pretty smoothly at my house. Thanks for asking," she said.

Mrs. Edwards, who is battling incurable cancer, told King that "the numbers don't look that optimistic, but I feel good." She said recent test results showed her in relatively good health. "I'm still out here fighting," she said.

(CNN) – Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Democratic hopeful John Edwards, tells CNN's Larry King that at the time her husband was carrying on an affair with videographer Rielle Hunter, she did not suspect him of being unfaithful.

"Did you have an suspicion at any time?," King asks Mrs. Edwards in an exclusive interview set to air Tuesday night on CNN.

"No. No. None," Elizabeth Edwards replies. "He's been on the road for quite some time. He's a lawyer who traveled. He took cases all over. But I saw the way he treated me. I knew the way he treated me, the commitment he had to our family. I was perhaps, the one thing I could agree with Maureen Dowd, I was probably naive, I was certainly naive."

Edwards also tells King that she believes her husband loves her, but fell prey to a flaw.

"I believe through this whole thing, John has loved me," she tells King. "I just think that he had a frailty that allowed him to do something which was completely contrary to the rest of his life."

The political spouse was also candid about the impact that her husband's infidelity has had on their marriage as she continues to live with terminal cancer.

"You know what's double sad, if God forbid you left, John will probably be double crushed," King says in Tuesday's interview.

"I completely agree with that," says Edwards. "We've talked about that. We've talked about his work at rebuilding trust, and it's really important that he get to that place, quote in time so that he understands that what he took away he does his very best job to put back."

Updated: 6:38 p.m.

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Programming Note: Watch Elizabeth Edwards' entire exclusive interview on Larry King Live beginning at 9 pm Tuesday.

(CNN) – Elizabeth Edwards is responding to a wave of criticism in recent days over the fact she did not forcefully urge her husband to exit the presidential race upon learning of his affair with a campaign staffer, saying Monday she was not aware of the extent of the indiscretion.

"When I found out and for a large part of writing the book, I only knew about a single night," she said in an appearance on NBC's Today Show. "A single moment of weakness. Though it was difficult to accept, most of us who seek to lead and most everybody who seeks to be led have moments of weakness in their lives and I did not think that was a fatal flaw and I was wrong."

The comments come days after Mrs. Edwards revealed in a new book out last week she first learned her husband, former presidential candidate John Edwards, had an affair with a former campaign staffer in 2006. The former presidential candidate told his wife about the affair only days after he formally launched his presidential bid in late December of 2006.

Despite his infedelity, the Edwardses decided to press on with the presidential campaign and Mrs. Edwards often served as a vigorous advocate for her husband's character in the months that followed - a fact many in the media have since criticized.

"She ended up going along, helping sell the voters on her husband's character as a truth teller and charm as a loving husband and father," New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd recently wrote. "She had put so many quarters in the shiny slot machine of their mutual ambition."

But in the interview Monday, Mrs. Edwards suggested she would likely not have supported her husband's second attempt at the White House had she known more details of the affair that have since come to light.

"I probably would have been more adamant about him not running than I was," she said. "The whole time he was running I only knew about this one thing."

Programming Note: Watch Elizabeth Edwards' exclusive interview on CNN's Larry King Live at 9 p.m. Eastern time Tuesday night.

WASHINGTON (CNN) – She’s lost her first born child, continues to battle cancer, suffered through coping with her husband’s extramarital affair, and been an integral part of two unsuccessful presidential campaigns.

But notwithstanding all of the sympathy from voters built up in favor of Elizabeth Edwards, two reporters suggested Sunday that the famous political spouse’s current media blitz could bankrupt her goodwill with the American public.

“She was painted as this martyr figure,” CNN American Morning Entertainment Reporter Lola Ogunnaike said on CNN’s Reliable Sources.“

“They had what seemed to be this ideal marriage. And it turns out that she was complicit in basically this cover- up. She knew all along that he'd had an affair, that he cheated on her, and decided that they would go along with this massive cover-up, and she ultimately decided that his political career was worth more than being honest.” Ogunnaike added.

Washington Post reporter Lois Romano said Mrs. Edwards recent efforts to rehash her husband’s extramarital affair in multiple interviews and her forthcoming book is filling some sort of need but is risky.

“There's clearly something in her personality that is pushing her to get the last word,” said Romano. “I think she is at risk of diminishing her own stature. I mean, people held her up as the soul of this relationship, and now she's turned it into a spectacle again,” Romano also said.

Romano also suggested that Mrs. Edwards’ book tour might backfire. “Well, I think what we're going to see here is we're going to see the curve of the public follow us [the media]. Right now . . . the public is still generally in support of her,” Romano said. “Let's see what happens after two weeks of this.”
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WASHINGTON (CNN) – She’s lost her first born child, continues to battle cancer, suffered through coping with her husband’s extramarital affair, and been an integral part of two unsuccessful presidential campaigns.

But notwithstanding all of the sympathy from voters built up in favor of Elizabeth Edwards, two reporters suggested Sunday that the famous political spouse’s current media blitz could bankrupt her goodwill with the American public.

“She was painted as this martyr figure,” CNN American Morning Entertainment Reporter Lola Ogunnaike said on CNN’s Reliable Sources.“

“They had what seemed to be this ideal marriage. And it turns out that she was complicit in basically this cover- up. She knew all along that he'd had an affair, that he cheated on her, and decided that they would go along with this massive cover-up, and she ultimately decided that his political career was worth more than being honest.” Ogunnaike added.

Washington Post reporter Lois Romano said Mrs. Edwards recent efforts to rehash her husband’s extramarital affair in multiple interviews and her forthcoming book is filling some sort of need but is risky.

“There's clearly something in her personality that is pushing her to get the last word,” said Romano. “I think she is at risk of diminishing her own stature. I mean, people held her up as the soul of this relationship, and now she's turned it into a spectacle again,” Romano also said.

Romano also suggested that Mrs. Edwards’ book tour might backfire. “Well, I think what we're going to see here is we're going to see the curve of the public follow us [the media]. Right now . . . the public is still generally in support of her,” Romano said. “Let's see what happens after two weeks of this.”
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WASHINGTON (CNN) - John Edwards supported his wife writing about their marital problems in the wake of his affair with a campaign staffer, the former presidential candidate said in a rare on-camera interview airing Thursday.

In the brief television interview with talk-show host Oprah Winfrey, Edwards said he never suggested his wife, Elizabeth, change any part of the book, even chapters that described the most personal details of her reaction to his infidelity.

"I think it's how she feels, it's what's inside of her," Edwards said. It was his first television interview since publicly acknowledging the affair nine months ago.

Among the revelations in her book out this week, Mrs. Edwards said she became nauseous when her husband told her of an affair with Rielle Hunter in 2006, who was hired to make Web videos about Edwards as he geared up for his second presidential run.

“I cried and screamed,” Mrs. Edwards writes in the book. “I went to the bathroom and threw up." Mrs. Edwards added that she urged her husband not to run for president in order to protect the family if the affair became public.

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(CNN) – Former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards has long denied that he is the father of videographer Rielle Hunter's daughter - but outspoken wife Elizabeth Edwards says she isn't sure.

In an interview with talk show host Oprah Winfrey set to air Thursday, Elizabeth Edwards says doesn't "have any idea" if her husband, who has admitted having an affair with Hunter, is also the father of Hunter's child.

"The other woman has a baby," Winfrey said during the interview.

"That's what I understand," Edwards said, interrupting the media mogul.

"And there is great speculation that your husband, John Edwards, is the father of that baby," responded Winfrey.

"That's what I understand. I've seen a picture of the baby. I have no idea. It doesn't look like my children. But, I don't have any idea," said Edwards.

In "Resilence," a new book by Edwards due out later this month, she describes her visceral, physical reaction to her husband telling her about the affair in late 2006, soon after he announced his second presidential bid.

"After I cried and screamed, I went to the bathroom and threw up," Edwards writes in her forthcoming book.

Related on TIME.com: How I survived John's affair

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WASHINGTON (CNN) - While acknowledging federal authorities are investigating the finances related to John Edwards political efforts, he and his wife say they don't believe there was any financial wrongdoing.

Investigators are focusing their inquiry on the more than $114,000 in payments from July 2006 through February 2007 by Edwards' political action committee to a production company owned by Rielle Hunter, a woman he had an affair with, according to the Raleigh News & Observer.

Hunter recorded web videos of Edwards for the political action committee. The payments were listed in federal election records as related to website/internet services work.

After months of tabloid rumors, Edwards admitted last summer he and Hunter had a previous affair.

In a statement given to several news organizations, including CNN, Edwards for the first time acknowledgedthere is an ongoing federal probe but would provide no further details.

"I am confident that no funds from my campaign were used improperly," Edwards said in the statement. "However, I know that it is the role of government to ensure that this is true. We have made available to the UnitedStates both the people and the information necessary to help get the issue resolved efficiently and in atimely manner."

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(CNN) - Elizabeth Edwards has largely avoided the spotlight since her husband admitted to an extramarital affair last summer, but the wife of former presidential candidate John Edwards is certain to draw headlines when she releases a personal new book this spring.

In Resilience, scheduled for a May release, Edwards will discuss how she's dealt with difficult moments in her life — like her husband’s affair, said the publisher.

"She would exhibit…remarkable grace and courage again when the very private matter of her husband's infidelity became public fodder," Broadway Books said in a release announcing the upcoming publication of the book.

Edwards has repeatedly declined to discuss her husband's relationship with campaign videographer Rielle Hunter.

“[Edwards is] one of the most beloved political figures in the country, and on the surface, seems to have led a charmed life,” said publishers. “In many ways, she has. Beautiful family. Thriving career. Supportive friendship. Loving marriage. But she's no stranger to adversity. "

Edwards is also expected to discuss her ongoing battle with breast cancer, and the 1996 death of her 16 year-old son Wade.

(CNN) - Elizabeth Edwards has largely avoided the spotlight since her husband admitted to an extramarital affair last summer, but the wife of former presidential candidate John Edwards is certain to draw headlines when she releases a personal new book this spring.

In Resilience, scheduled for a May release, Edwards will discuss how she's dealt with difficult moments in her life — like her husband’s affair, said the publisher.

"She would exhibit…remarkable grace and courage again when the very private matter of her husband's infidelity became public fodder," Broadway Books said in a release announcing the upcoming publication of the book.

Edwards has repeatedly declined to discuss her husband's relationship with campaign videographer Rielle Hunter.

“[Edwards is] one of the most beloved political figures in the country, and on the surface, seems to have led a charmed life,” said publishers. “In many ways, she has. Beautiful family. Thriving career. Supportive friendship. Loving marriage. But she's no stranger to adversity. "

Edwards is also expected to discuss her ongoing battle with breast cancer, and the 1996 death of her 16 year-old son Wade.

Elizabeth Edwards posted a statement on the Daily Kos Web site Friday about her husband's confession that he had had an extramarital affair.

FULL STATEMENT FOLLOWS:

Our family has been through a lot. Some caused by nature, some caused by human weakness, and some – most recently – caused by the desire for sensationalism and profit without any regard for the human consequences. None of these has been easy. But we have stood with one another through them all. Although John believes he should stand alone and take the consequences of his action now, when the door closes behind him, he has his family waiting for him.

John made a terrible mistake in 2006. The fact that it is a mistake that many others have made before him did not make it any easier for me to hear when he told me what he had done. But he did tell me. And we began a long and painful process in 2006, a process oddly made somewhat easier with my diagnosis in March of 2007. This was our private matter, and I frankly wanted it to be private because as painful as it was I did not want to have to play it out on a public stage as well. Because of a recent string of hurtful and absurd lies in a tabloid publication, because of a picture falsely suggesting that John was spending time with a child it wrongly alleged he had fathered outside our marriage, our private matter could no longer be wholly private.

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John and Elizabeth Edwards made an appearance at Sen. Obama's speech in North Carolina Monday.

Photo credit: AP.

(CNN)—Elizabeth Edwards, who has made her opposition to John McCain’s health care policy evident in recent months, kept up her assault on his newly-released health care proposal Tuesday, calling the plan a complete “disaster.”

“The fear of a government-run program is completely a false boogeyman in this race,” since neither Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton have proposed a government takeover of the nation’s health care system, Edwards told CNN’s Dana Bash

“Senator McCain has decided if he puts up this red herring that he’ll be able to shoot it down and make him look better,” said Edwards.

The presumptive Republican nominee is in the midst of a week-long tour highlighting his own newly-announced health care reform proposal, which emphasizes personal responsibility and market-driven savings.

“We must move away from a system that is fragmented and pays for expensive procedures toward one where a family has a medical home…where the focus is on affordable quality outcomes,” McCain said earlier this week.

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(CNN) – Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards, is picking sides in the Democratic nomination race – at least with respect to health care. In an interview that aired Wednesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” she threw her support behind Sen. Hillary Clinton’s health care plan.

“In order to ensure that we have universal coverage, we need to say everybody has to join,” Edwards told ABC’s Robin Roberts. “So, for that reason, the mandates that Sen. Clinton is talking about, I think are going to be more successful in achieving the goal,” she added.

Both health care plans have the same goals, said Edwards, but “I just have more confidence in Sen. Clinton’s policies than Sen. Obama’s on this particular issue.”

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(CNN) - Elizabeth Edwards has taken a visiting fellowship at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

Edwards, the wife of former presidential candidate John Edwards, fellowship will occur next week, the school announced Wednesday. She will make a public address in the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum on April 9.

Earlier: Elizabeth Edwards takes aim at McCain health care plan

Elizabeth Edwards

MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (CNN)– ­ Just two days after the CNN debates in Las Vegas, Elizabeth Edwards encouraged voters to examine their choices in the presidential field and pick a candidate for reasons other than breaking the proverbial "glass ceiling."

"There are a lot of reasons, I think, to support a number of candidates in this race," Elizabeth told the crowd of New Hampshire democrats. "I think we have a lot of ceilings, glass ceilings, to break and I'm confidant that we will in the years to come."

While Elizabeth did not mention the New York Senator by name, her words spoke to her husband's campaign efforts to woo women voters, a key voting block, away from frontrunner, Hillary Clinton.

The New York senator has campaigned aggressively to win support among women voters and has called her presidential bid an opportunity to break the ultimate glass ceiling.

"America is ready for change ­ and I believe women will lead that change," Clinton says on her website. "It¹s up to us to do our part to take back the White House and change this country, and that¹s exactly what we¹re going to do. I say this nation can shatter the highest glass ceiling ­ because that¹s what Americans have been doing for over 200 years."

The Edwards camp has strengthened its women voter outreach in the Granite state. Last weekend, Edwards' daughter, Cate, campaigned with former President of NARAL Pro-Choice America, Kate Michelman, to launch New Hampshire Women for Edwards. In an exclusive interview with CNN, Michelman noted that the women's vote was still up for grabs.

"Women are not a monolithic vote," Michelman told CNN at a Feminist health clinic in Greenland. "Nor are all women going to vote just because we have a woman. We've worked very hard as a women's movement for many decades to get to the point where women are looked at wholly, not just as females, not through the lens of our gender."

Speaking on behalf of her husband Saturday, Elizabeth highlighted what the campaign has described as key "populist" themes: fighting against the influence of money in politics and serving as an advocate for the disenfranchised.

"Once we take the money of the powerful, how good an advocate are we for those people who depend on us to be their champion," Elizabeth questioned.

Said Elizabeth, "Right now we also have a really important ceiling to break and that is the influence in our lives of money," in regards to the influence of lobbyist money in politics. "Right now the ceiling on top of us is not glass, it's made of money. And we need to break it."

Click here to see CNN's new political portal: CNNPolitics.com

–CNN New Hampshire Producer Sareena Dalla

Jeri Thompson, Michelle Obama, Ann Romney, Elizabeth Edwards, and Cindy McCain put aside the competitiveness of the campaign trail on Tuesday to talk about being political spouses.

(CNN) – Fifteen years after Hillary Clinton made her then-controversial comment about being a career woman and not staying home to bake cookies, the wives of five contenders for the White House gathered in California Tuesday to discuss their involvement in their husband’s presidential campaigns.

The wives’ discussion with moderator Maria Shriver, wife of California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, began with Shriver pointing out that the gathering was historic. “Never before,” Shriver said, have political spouses, “gathered together to talk about their lives, to talk about the campaign trail, to talk about what it’s like when someone from your family gets up and runs for president.”

And talk they did. Shriver asked Barack Obama’s wife, Michelle, what she had feared or worried about in the early days of her husband contemplating a run for the White House. “You always worry about your life getting sucked out from under you,” Mrs. Obama responded. “I’m very practical, I have to know how is this going to play out.”

For her part, Jeri Thompson, wife of Fred Thompson, sought to dash persistent reports that she has a prominent, strategic role in her husband’s presidential campaign. “I have a one-year-old,” Thompson said. “And, I have a four-year-old. That’s my main role,” Thompson said. “Other than that, I do what I can to help when he asks me.”

Elizabeth Edwards was not as modest as Jeri Thompson in explaining her involvement in John Edwards’ campaign. “We do know our husbands best. Sometimes if we think he’s being misrepresented or misserved by something, it’s our jobs as wives to say, ‘you know, I don’t think that’s really the best thing,’” said Edwards.

Cindy McCain, wife of Sen. John McCain and a veteran of a past White House run, brought a different perspective to the discussion. “My boundaries changed from 2000 to this race,” she said. “I have now myself learned to say no” to some of the demands of a presidential campaign.

Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann, spoke about the pressures of being a political wife. Gesturing towards Elizabeth Edwards, Romney rejected the assumption that statements or stances taken by the women always originate from their husband’s campaigns. “You have to be who you are. You have to have the flexibility and the luxury of expressing yourself for who we are as individuals,” said Romney.

The discussion was part of the 2007 Women’s Conference, a non-partisan annual event put on by California’s governor and first lady for the last twenty years. In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Tuesday, Shriver said former President Bill Clinton did not participate in the spouses’ panel because of a scheduling conflict and that Judith Giuliani, wife of former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, “declined to attend.”

– CNN Associate Producer Martina Stewart

Watch Elizabeth Edwards explain why her husband should win the White House.

WASHINGTON (CNN) - Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic presidential contender John Edwards, D-North Carolina, was in the Situation Room Monday. She discussed healthcare, what it's like to be a candidate's spouse, and two of her husband's White House rivals - Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-New York, and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, R-New York. Watch Wolf Blitzer's interview with Mrs. Edwards.

Click here to see CNN's new political portal: CNNPolitics.com