On a Thursday in April 1990, members of the Council of the Twelve were meeting in the Salt Lake Temple to discuss matters of concern to them, and they were later joined by the First Presidency.
Near the end of that meeting, April 10, 1990, after all the agenda items had been covered, President Howard W. Hunter asked, "Does anyone have anything that is not on the agenda?"Having been told privately that their president had something he wanted to bring up if time remained at the end of the meeting, no one said anything.
"Well then," President Hunter continued, "if no one else has anything to say, I thought I'd just let you know that I'm going to be married this afternoon."
His bride was Inis Bernice Egan, whom he had known from his days as El Sereno Ward bishop in Pasadena, Calif. They met in 1945, when her family lived in that ward. President Hunter moved to Salt Lake City 11/2 years after his call to the Council of the Twelve, and his first wife, Clara May "Claire" Jeffs Hunter, died in 1983.
The private temple ceremony was performed by President Gordon B. Hinckley, first counselor in the First Presidency. The only others present were the witnesses: President Thomas S. Monson, second counselor in the First Presidency; and Sister Hunter's bishop.
What did his children think?
"We think it's not only appropriate, but it's the right thing for you to do," President Hunter's second son, Richard, assured him.
President Hunter explained that the couple wanted the ceremony to be small and private, with no publicity. Sister Hunter's three children from her first marriage were also taken by surprise.
On the Easter Sunday after they were married, President Hunter and his bride attended church in his ward. "The bishop announced our marriage," he wrote in his journal, "and after the meeting people swarmed about us with congratulations and good wishes . . ."
The following week, members of the First Presidency and the Council of the Twelve and their wives honored the couple at a dinner that featured a large wedding cake that Sister Hunter cut and served.
President and Sister Hunter had renewed their acquaintance after she began working in the Church Office Building.
"I have been catapulted a great distance," she said in a Church News interview shortly after her husband's sustaining as church president. "A lot of people know me from the time I was a receptionist in the main lobby of the Church Office Building. Now they see me as the wife of the president of the church."
She worked at church headquarters for 13 years, beginning after she moved from California to Utah in 1968. The last few years before retiring, she worked in the building's lobby, serving as much as a missionary to non-LDS visitors and as an ambassador of good will to foreign tourists as a receptionist.
"We were conscious of the years when he was alone and how grateful we were when Inis came along," said President Boyd K. Packer, acting president of the Council of the Twelve, in a videotape on President Hunter's life. "She brought a sparkle back into his life and is a great blessing to him. He has been blessed with two wonderful companions, each one of them filling the need in his life at the time."
President Thomas S. Monson, second counselor in the First Presidency, added: "His wife, Inis, has been a great blessing to him. She meets the people well, and she has a testimony, and she enjoys bearing that testimony right along with President Hunter bearing his when they meet with the members of the church in many locations."
In her travels with her husband on church assignments, she not only has been a support to him but also an inspiration to members in many nations. After hearing her speak in regional conferences and other church gatherings, members often have crowded around her to shake her hand, hug her and thank her for her insightful message.
Sister Hunter was portrayed in a Church News article shortly after President Hunter was sustained as prophet as a "basic, down-to-earth, everyday-friend type of person. She is a one-woman cheering section for just about anybody who needs someone on his or her sideline. Nothing seems to delight her more than seeing others succeed."
She has one basic expectation of just about everybody she meets: "I believe people are nice and good, and I try to love them," she said during that interview. "I have always believed that love begets love. If you love people, they love you back."
She said that when she first started traveling with President Hunter, she prepared talks in advance. "I would just agonize over what I should say, and I would work and work on the talks," she said. "Then, when I went to a missionary meeting, I didn't think I would be called upon to speak, so I didn't have anything prepared.
"All of a sudden, I heard myself being introduced as the first speaker. As I stood in front of that group, I prayed desperately that I would know what I should say. The spirit dictated the words. Ever since then, I've just sort of formed a nucleus of what I wanted to talk about and have let the spirit take over from there."
She has a dual love for music and the scriptures. As a young girl, she sang at home and then, with her sister, she was invited to sing in church meetings. In high school, she had a lead role in an opera, and, as an adult, sang with the Pasadena Choral Ensemble and the Southern California Mormon Choir.
She also is well-known among Utah's doll hobbyists for the dolls she makes and clothes she sews for them. She even paints their porcelain faces. She has won blue ribbons in state fairs and doll shows.
In the Church News interview, she shared the philosophy by which she lives. "I have a little plaque in my kitchen that says, `Bloom where you are planted.' I follow that philosophy that you should do your best wherever you are."
In January 1991 she and her husband returned to a special sacrament meeting of the South Pasadena Ward (formerly El Sereno) to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the ward's creation. And in May 1992 they attended a reunion of the adjoining Garvanza Ward, which she had attended for many years in her youth. She also showed President Hunter the homes where she had lived, the schools she had attended and other places associated with her childhood.
She was born Inis Bernice Egan on Aug. 19, 1914, in Thatcher, Box Elder County. She is the daughter of Horace Walter Egan and Anna Bernhardina Jacobsson Tengberg Egan.
When she was 3 months old, her family moved to central Idaho, where her father ran a general store and post office. The family lived awhile in Soda Springs, Idaho, then Richmond, Cache County, and when Sister Hunter was 7, they moved to Highland Park, Calif.
She married Robert Stanton on April 10, 1934, in Los Angeles. They were later divorced.
After her first marriage, she lived in Alhambra and La Canada, Calif.
Her children by her first marriage are Barbara, Robert and Elayne.