Cindy McCain Biography

Cindy McCain is an Arizona businesswoman and the widow of the late U.S. Senator John McCain. In 2000 she became been the chairman of Hensley & Company, the Anheuser-Busch beer distributorship founded by her father in 1955.

Cindy McCain was raised in Arizona and earned both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in special education at the University of Southern California. She taught at Agua Fria High School in Arizona before meeting John McCain in 1979, while she was in Hawaii on vacation. John McCain was still married to (though separated from) his first wife, and 18 years Cindy’s senior. They fell in love and by the next year John was divorced and the two were married.

The Hensley family connections (and money) helped John McCain get elected to Congress in 1982, and then to the U.S. Senate in 1986, making the McCains one of Arizona’s most prominent families.

Cindy McCain made headlines of her own in 1994, when she admitted to a painkiller addiction and said she had stolen drugs from from a charity she founded, the American Voluntary Medical Team. The charity was shuttered and a physician lost his license, but McCain was not charged with a crime and agreed to repay the AVMT and enter a diversion program.

Throughout her career, Cindy McCain has been in charge of her family’s business and has been active in charities, including Operation Smile, CARE, and the land-mine removal group The HALO Trust.

John McCain was the Republican candidate for president in 2008, but was defeated by Democrat Barack Obama. John McCain died of brain cancer in 2018.