Wife of Stjepan Mesić passes away

(Patria) - Milka Mesić (85), wife of former Croatian president Stjepan Mesić, has passed away, Jutarnji list reports.

Milka Mesić was born in 1939 in the village of Slabinja in the Sisak-Moslavina County.

She met her future husband Stjepan (89) after he saw her on the jury of a dance competition in Zagreb and asked a friend who knew her to introduce them.

The couple married in 1961 after Stjepan finished college, and soon after their first daughter Saša was born.

Milka studied psychology at the University of Zagreb but left her studies after the birth of her first daughter and her husband's graduation.

The couple moved from Zagreb to Stjepan's hometown of Orahovica, and in 1963 their second daughter Dunja was born.

After the Croatian Spring, in which Stjepan also participated, the couple moved from Orahovica to Zagreb, where they lived with Milka's mother Mileva.

Milka worked in a kindergarten but nearly lost her job after it was discovered that her husband Stjepan had been imprisoned for political reasons. However, she kept her job after some colleagues stood up for her.

After her husband was elected president of Croatia in 2000, she rarely appeared in public and likewise rarely accompanied her husband on official trips and state visits abroad.