THE OTHER OFFICE: BONGBONG MARCOS AT HOME

On his birthday, a look at the president who is, first, a father.

Every 13 September people mostly talk about the president in terms of policy — SoNAs, infrastructure, foreign trips, the usual.

But take away the podium for a second, and the story underneath is a pretty familiar one: A husband of over 30 years, a dad of three grown sons, someone who — at least based on what he’s shared himself — still tries to make it home for dinner when he can. He runs the Philippines, yes. At home, he just answers “Dad.”

Born into the job

Marcos was born on 13 September 1957, in Batac, Ilocos Norte, the only son of former President Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr. and former First Lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos, and the middle child among four siblings — Imee, Irene, and Aimee.

By his own telling, he grew up in a house where public service wasn’t something you did occasionally; it was part of daily life.

School took him far from home early. He started at La Salle Greenhills, then finished secondary school at Worth School in West Sussex, England, in 1974. From there it was Oxford for a Special Diploma in Social Studies, then graduate business studies at Wharton — though he didn’t quite finish that stretch uninterrupted.

He was still a student there when he got elected Vice Governor of Ilocos Norte in 1980, at just 23.

The household he built

In 1993, he married Louise “Liza” Araneta-Marcos, a lawyer he’s described as one of the steadiest parts of his life through decades in politics.

Together they raised three sons — Ferdinand Alexander “Sandro,” Joseph Simon, and William Vincent — and, from what he’s said, tried to keep things at home fairly grounded: work hard, stay independent, don’t forget where you’re from.

At his 2022 inauguration, he made a point of introducing Liza and the boys — not as the “First Family,” but simply as his wife and children, there to watch one of the biggest days of his life.

The marriage gets its own moment in the spotlight sometimes too.

In a 2024 Valentine’s Day vlog with the First Lady, the couple opened up about how they make time for each other despite schedules that rarely slow down.

Asked how he balances being a husband and the country’s chief executive, President Marcos said that while finding that balance can be difficult, he and Liza make the most of whatever time they have together.

“Well, mahirap talaga ‘yung balance dahil work takes up so much of our time. Well, hindi lang naman ako, pati si Liza marami talagang ginagawa. So, we try to find five minutes here, 20 minutes there, we eat together,” President Marcos said.

“Basta’t whatever the schedule allows, we take full advantage of it,” he added.

And yes, date nights are still part of the routine.

When asked if they still go on dates, First Lady Liza shared that the President often cooks for them at home. When their schedules allow, the couple also makes Wednesdays their “date night,” dining at a restaurant of their choice and taking the time to “talk about funny things to lessen the stress.”

He makes it a point to carve out real time with Liza no matter how packed things get. Mostly, though, it’s the small stuff that slips through — a birthday post, a family dinner, a holiday photo.

In 2024, the family went to a Thanksgiving Mass together in Batac. By December 2025, at a Christmas gathering, he was introducing Liza and the boys as the First Family while teasing Sandro about his political responsibilities and giving Simon a hard time about his work, too — pretty much the same ribbing that happens at any Filipino family gathering.

And back in September 2024, on his own birthday, he brought Sandro and Simon along to an event in Ilocos Norte, joking that he wanted them to see what the job actually looks like outside their usual routines.

He’s also said, more than once, that his biggest fear is living his whole life and having nothing to show for it — “Nabuhay ako, ang tagal ko sa mundong ito na walang natulungan, wala akong naipaganda,” as he put it in BBM Vlog #207: Questions I’ve Never Asked My Dad. It’s one of those lines that says more about how he thinks about legacy than any speech does — not just as a president, but as someone’s son, and someone’s father.

Faith, quietly

He’s a practicing Catholic, and he’s talked about faith being less of a public performance and more of a private compass for him.

His 2024 Christmas message leaned into that same idea — love, sharing, family, keep it simple — which tracks with how the Marcoses’ own family moments tend to look: meals, milestones, Mass, nothing dramatically different from any other household, just with more cameras around.

Beatles, books and sinigang

Outside of politics, there’s a more textured version of the guy. He reads a lot, like his dad did, and cooks a bit like his mom — sinigang, pinakbet, even a decent pan-seared steak, if his own interviews are anything to go by.

He’s also, somewhat unexpectedly, a serious Beatles fan — he played in a band during his school days in England and calls Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band his favorite album. Small detail, but it makes the whole biography feel a little more human.

The job that followed him home

Of course, none of this exists in a bubble — his public and private life are pretty tangled together at this point. His administration points to infrastructure, food security programs, and digital government services as wins; his latest State of the Nation Address, his longest yet at an hour and 26 minutes, covered everything from flood control to electricity costs to EV targets to fuel prices amid conflict abroad.

Those are the kinds of claims that get debated in Congress and op-eds, not settled in one article — worth reading up on from more than one source.

But on a birthday, maybe the simpler detail matters more: at 69, running one of the toughest jobs in the country, he’s still — by his own account, and the small moments that occasionally slip past the schedule — a husband to Liza, Dad to Sandro, Simon and Vincent and father to a Filipino nation.