Deborah Shiling, For most of his political career, Bernie Sanders did not publicly acknowledge his first marriage. It was not listed in campaign materials. It was not in early biographical accounts. It simply did not appear.
When he ran for president in 2015, journalists found it. Sanders was 73. The marriage had lasted eighteen months and ended in 1966. His first wife was Deborah Shiling — a civil rights activist from Baltimore who had protested in segregated restaurants, volunteered on an Israeli kibbutz, and then lived without electricity in rural Vermont.
When asked about Bernie Sanders in 2015, Deborah said: “I really don’t want to say much. All I can say is I believe in Bernie Sanders and I am a strong supporter.”
Eight words that said everything and nothing at the same time.
Quick Facts
| Detail | Information |
|---|---|
| Full name | Deborah Shiling Messing (née Shiling) |
| Born | 1944, Baltimore, Maryland (exact date not public) |
| Father | Dr. Moses Shiling, chief of pulmonary diseases at Sinai Hospital, Baltimore |
| Mother | Not publicly identified |
| Religion | Jewish (consistent with family background) |
| Education | University of Chicago (subject of study disputed — see contradictions) |
| Civil rights work | Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), 1960; sit-ins in Baltimore’s segregated restaurants |
| Married Bernie Sanders | September 6, 1964 (one source says September 16 — see contradictions) |
| Wedding location | Garden of her parents’ home, Baltimore |
| Marriage length | 18 months (disputed — some sources say 2 years) |
| Divorce | 1966 |
| Children with Sanders | None |
| Second husband | Bob Messing (married approximately 1967) |
| Career | Buyer at Hunger Mountain Coop, Montpelier, Vermont (20 years) |
| Current name | Deborah Messing |
| Current location | Montpelier area, Vermont |
| Public statement on Sanders | “I really don’t want to say much. All I can say is I believe in Bernie Sanders and I am a strong supporter.” (2015) |
The Marriage Sanders Didn’t Mention
Bernie Sanders ran for mayor of Burlington in 1981. He won. He ran for Congress in 1988 and lost. He won a congressional seat in 1990. He entered the Senate in 2007. He ran for president in 2016 and 2020.
At no point in that timeline did he publicly discuss Deborah Shiling.
This is not normal political behavior. Most politicians, when asked about personal history, acknowledge a first marriage. Sanders did not. The marriage was, in effect, invisible until journalists noticed the gap between 1963 — when he met Deborah — and 1988 — when he married Jane O’Meara Driscoll.
Why it was hidden is not fully documented. No statement from Sanders directly explains the omission. Some accounts suggest it was simply private. Others note that the marriage lasted under two years, the couple had no children, and Sanders had no apparent motivation to keep discussing it.
But eighteen months of marriage to a woman who influenced his early political formation is not nothing. The fact that she does not appear in decades of his public biography is a choice that was made — by him, by her, or by both.
Baltimore, 1944: Where Deborah Came From
She was born in 1944 in Baltimore, Maryland. Her father, Dr. Moses Shiling, was the chief of pulmonary diseases at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore — one of the city’s major teaching hospitals. He was a prominent medical figure in the Jewish community of Baltimore.
Her mother is not identified in any source. Whether she had siblings is disputed — Wikibious describes her as “apparently an only child,” but no primary source confirms or denies this either way.
She grew up in a household shaped by Jewish professional culture, high educational expectations, and the specific political tensions of Baltimore in the 1950s and early 1960s. Baltimore was a segregated city. It had a significant Black community and a white political establishment that enforced separation through law and practice.
Deborah was not a passive bystander to that.
In 1960 — when she was approximately sixteen years old — she joined the Congress of Racial Equality, known as CORE. She participated in sit-ins at Baltimore’s segregated restaurants. She was a Black civil rights ally taking personal risk in a city where such actions had real consequences.
This detail predates her University of Chicago enrollment by two or three years. It means her political formation was already underway before she ever met Sanders. She was not politicized by their relationship. She arrived at it already politicized.
The University of Chicago — And What She Studied There
Both Deborah and Bernie attended the University of Chicago. They met in 1963. Sanders was already an active student organizer; at UChicago he protested segregated university-owned housing.
What Deborah studied is one of the genuine gaps in the record.
One source says she studied political science. Another — ThrillNG — claims she obtained “a bachelor of science degree in Medicine.” ArticleBio says she attended and “studied political science.” No primary source confirms any specific major.
The “Medicine” claim from ThrillNG is almost certainly fabricated — the source appears to have confused her father’s medical background with her own degree. A bachelor of science in Medicine would be an unusual UChicago credential for someone who went on to work at a food cooperative.
What can be said with reasonable confidence: she studied something in the social sciences or humanities. The political science claim is consistent with her documented activism. But it is not confirmed by any primary record.
The Kibbutz — Before the Wedding
Before they married, Deborah and Bernie volunteered together at Sha’ar HaAmakim, an Israeli kibbutz in the Jezreel Valley. They spent several months there.
This detail matters for context. Sha’ar HaAmakim was a kibbutz affiliated with Hashomer Hatzair — a left-wing Zionist movement with socialist roots. Going there was not a vacation. It was a political and ideological act consistent with who both of them were at the time.
The kibbutz stay is documented across multiple sources and is consistent with primary biographical accounts of Sanders. It confirms that before they married, they shared a common political framework — labor-left ideology, civil rights activism, collectivist ethics.
They returned from Israel and married on September 6, 1964 — or September 16, 1964, depending on the source. The ceremony was held in the garden of her parents’ home in Baltimore.
The Sugar Shack: No Electricity, 85 Acres, 18 Months
After the wedding, Deborah and Bernie moved to Vermont. They settled in Middlesex — a tiny hamlet on the outskirts of Montpelier. They bought a property called the Sugar Shack for $2,500. It sat on 85 acres of land.
It had no electricity.
They lived there for the duration of their marriage. Multiple sources confirm the lack of electricity. Sanders was in his early twenties, attempting to establish a political identity in Vermont. He had no steady income. His political ambitions were not yet attached to any organized path.
Deborah lived on that 85-acre property with no electricity while her husband tried to figure out what he was doing. The marriage lasted 18 months. They divorced in 1966.
No reason for the divorce is documented in any public source. Nobody has quoted either of them explaining it. Given the conditions — poverty, rural isolation, no established career for either of them — the question of why it ended might be less interesting than the question of why it lasted as long as it did.
The Marriage Length Contradiction
This is a specific, documented conflict.
PeoplePill — which cites Sanders biographical sources directly — says the marriage ended “after 18 months, in 1966.” DicyTrends, HotWags, WikiBious, and CelebSuburb all say 18 months. These sources are generally drawing from the same biographical accounts.
BiographyTalks, ThrillNG, and DreShare say the marriage lasted “two years.” Two years and eighteen months are not the same length. If they married in September 1964 and divorced in 1966, the span was approximately 18 to 20 months. The “two years” claim appears to be a rounding of that figure that then got repeated.
The wedding date conflict compounds this. PeoplePill says September 6, 1964. JimJocoy says September 16, 1964. These are different dates in the same month. One is wrong. No source explains the discrepancy.
Bob Messing — The Second Marriage With Almost No Record
After the divorce in 1966, Deborah eventually married a man named Bob Messing. JimJocoy states this happened in 1967, one year after the divorce. Other sources say it was “many years later.” One source — BiographyTalks — produced a line suggesting she “married a presidential candidate at age 73,” which would place the second marriage in 2017. This is clearly wrong on multiple levels: Bob Messing has no known connection to presidential politics, and the phrasing appears to be a garbled conflation of two separate facts.
Deborah took his surname. She has been known as Deborah Messing since that marriage. Whether she had children with Bob Messing is not documented anywhere. Whether the marriage is still ongoing or whether Bob Messing is still living is also not confirmed in any public record.
The second husband is, effectively, a name and a surname — nothing more.
What She Actually Did for Decades: Hunger Mountain Coop
This is the most documented aspect of Deborah’s post-marriage life, and it is more interesting than it sounds.
The Hunger Mountain Coop is a 20,000-square-foot community-owned natural foods cooperative in Montpelier, Vermont. It is not a small boutique. It is a substantial community institution that has operated for decades. It is worker-owned and member-governed — the kind of cooperative structure consistent with the left-political values Deborah demonstrated from age sixteen onward.
She worked there as a buyer. PeoplePill says “for several years.” ArticleBio says “for 20 years.” Twenty years of purchasing for a cooperative food store is a real career with real responsibilities: vendor relationships, supply chains, pricing, inventory.
It is not glamorous. It does not appear in Sanders’ campaign speeches. But it is the most concrete, documented employment in Deborah Shiling’s adult life — and it is entirely consistent with who she has been since she joined CORE as a teenager.
Three Sources That Are Simply Wrong
This record also contains some of the most obviously fabricated content in this entire article series.
Source one: theedgepro.com describes “Deborah Shiling” as born on March 12, 1985 in Los Angeles, who “made her acting debut in 2005 in ‘Whispers of the Heart'” and “quickly gained recognition for her talent and versatility.” This is AI-generated content attached to the wrong name. It has nothing to do with Deborah Shiling née Sanders. It is entirely invented.
Source two: CelebBlink.net describes a woman born in Vermont in 1944 who grew up there, “started as a secretary,” and “eventually became a high-level executive at a cable television company.” This is either about a completely different person or fully fabricated. Deborah Shiling was born in Baltimore. Nothing in any credible source connects her to a cable television executive role.
Source three: ThrillNG claims she “studied Medicine” and obtained “a bachelor of science degree in Medicine from the University of Chicago.” This appears to be a confusion between her father’s medical career and her own education. It is directly contradicted by everything known about her actual work.
What Is Actually Known vs. What Is Not
Confirmed across solid primary-sourced material:
- Born 1944, Baltimore, Maryland
- Father: Dr. Moses Shiling, pulmonary chief at Sinai Hospital, Baltimore
- Joined CORE in 1960; participated in Baltimore sit-ins aged ~16
- Attended University of Chicago; met Sanders in 1963
- Volunteered at Sha’ar HaAmakim kibbutz with Sanders before wedding
- Married Sanders September 6 (or 16 — disputed), 1964, at parents’ home in Baltimore
- Moved to Middlesex, Vermont; lived without electricity on 85-acre property
- Divorced 1966, after 18 months (some sources say 2 years)
- No children with Sanders
- Later married Bob Messing; known since as Deborah Messing
- Worked as buyer at Hunger Mountain Coop, Montpelier
- Lives in or near Montpelier, Vermont
- Only public statement: “I really don’t want to say much. All I can say is I believe in Bernie Sanders and I am a strong supporter.” (2015)
Unclear or unresolved:
- Her university major (political science claimed by some; medicine claimed by one — the latter is almost certainly wrong)
- Exact wedding date: September 6 vs. September 16, 1964
- When she married Bob Messing (1967 per one source; “many years later” per others)
- Whether she had children with Bob Messing
- Her current status and activity beyond the Hunger Mountain Coop period
Actively fabricated in at least two sources:
- Born 1985 in Los Angeles, actress (theedgepro.com — completely different person or invented)
- “High-level cable television executive” born in Vermont (CelebBlink.net — not Deborah Shiling)
- “Married a presidential candidate at age 73” (BiographyTalks — garbled AI output)
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FAQ — 12 Real Questions
1. Who is Deborah Shiling?
She is the first wife of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders. They met at the University of Chicago in 1963, married in 1964, and divorced in 1966. She has since been known as Deborah Messing. Before and after the marriage, she lived a politically active, community-rooted life largely in Vermont.
2. Why did nobody know about this marriage for decades?
Because Sanders did not publicly acknowledge it throughout his political career. It was not referenced in early campaign materials or biographical accounts. Journalists surfaced it in 2015 when he ran for president. No full explanation for the omission has ever been given.
3. Where was she born and raised?
Baltimore, Maryland, in 1944. Her father was a prominent physician at Sinai Hospital. She grew up in Baltimore’s Jewish professional community.
4. Was she already a political activist before meeting Sanders?
Yes. She joined the Congress of Racial Equality in 1960 — aged approximately sixteen — and participated in sit-ins at Baltimore’s segregated restaurants. Her political activism predates their relationship by several years.
5. What was the kibbutz visit about?
Before marrying, she and Sanders spent several months volunteering at Sha’ar HaAmakim, a kibbutz in Israel affiliated with the left-wing Hashomer Hatzair movement. It was a politically chosen act, not a tourist trip.
6. How long did the marriage last?
18 months, according to the most reliably sourced accounts — including PeoplePill, which draws from Sanders biographies. Several sources say “two years.” The marriage ran from September 1964 to 1966. The 18-month figure is more consistent with those dates.
7. Why did they divorce?
No documented reason exists. They were living on an 85-acre property with no electricity in rural Vermont, with no stable income. Sanders had not yet found his political footing. The practical conditions of their life were stark. None of that is offered as an explanation in any source — it is contextual inference.
8. Did they have children together?
No. Their only public connection after the divorce is Deborah’s 2015 statement of support.
9. Who is Bob Messing?
Her second husband, whose surname she took. One source says they married in 1967. Others say “many years later.” His background, occupation, and current status are not documented anywhere. The second marriage is essentially undocumented beyond the name.
10. What did she do for work?
She worked as a buyer at the Hunger Mountain Coop in Montpelier, Vermont — a 20,000-square-foot community-owned natural foods cooperative. Multiple sources confirm this role, some for “several years,” others for “20 years.”
11. What did she say about Sanders in 2015?
Her only documented public statement: “I really don’t want to say much. All I can say is I believe in Bernie Sanders and I am a strong supporter.” She refused to elaborate. She expressed no bitterness. She gave journalists nothing to work with beyond quiet, deliberate endorsement.
12. Is she still alive?
As of all available reporting she is alive. She would be in her early eighties in 2026. She lives in or near Montpelier, Vermont, and maintains a private life consistent with how she has lived since 1966.