Former President Carter and his wife, Rosalynn Carter, were captured in a photo Thursday evening sharing a New Year’s kiss in their Georgia hometown.
The image, posted on Facebook by longtime friend and superintendent of the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site Jill Stuckey, showed the 96-year-old former president leaning in to kiss his wife, 93, while she pulled down her face mask as they sat in their car in Plains, Ga.
“I caught these folks kissing in my driveway tonight! If that doesn’t make your New Year start out right nothing will!! HAPPY NEW YEAR,” Stuckey wrote in the post.
Stuckey told The Hill that Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter were parked in her driveway as they held their annual “peanut drop” to mark the start of 2021, sharing an image of a blue-lighted, peanut shaped structure being lowered from a second-story balcony.
Stuckey said the man dropping the peanut was the Carters’ grandson-in-law, and he was standing in front of the room where the former president’s parents lived when they got married.
The small “peanut drop” gathering, however, happened at 8:00 p.m. Eastern instead of later in the evening, Stuckey said, because “we are old and don’t want to wait until midnight!”
“Also the Carters are always ahead of everyone else,” she jokingly told The Hill.
In early December, the Carter Center issued a statement saying that the couple was encouraging Americans to take the COVID-19 vaccine once it becomes widely available to the public.
“Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, said today that they are in full support of COVID-19 vaccine efforts and encourage everyone who is eligible to get immunized as soon as it becomes available in their communities,” the statement read.
The center’s message also mentioned that Rosalynn Carter was a “staunch advocate for vaccines” while she was first lady of Georgia and co-founded Vaccinate Your Family in 1991 to improve access.
Former Presidents Obama, George W. Bush and Clinton have all also offered to get the COVID-19 vaccine in public in order to promote public confidence in the safety of the inoculation.