Queen Elizabeth and former US President Barack Obama at a Buckingham Palace State Banquet in 2011
(Picture: Lewis Whyld/PA Wire)Queen Elizabeth has had myriad encounters with 13 US presidents over the past seven decades.
These meetings involved gala dinners, riding horses, dancing, all occasions for Her Majesty to impress them with her signature wit and humour.
Here are all the presidents the Queen has met.
Harry Truman (1945-1953)
When Her Majesty ascended the throne, the president of the United States was Harry Truman.
She first met the president as a princess, when she stayed with the Trumans at Blair House along with Prince Philip, the late Duke of Edinburgh.
Truman called them a “wonderful young couple who have so completely captured the hearts of all of us.”
Dwight D Eisenhower (1953-1961)
The Queen had a cherished relationship with the 34th US president.
Much like Truman, she met Dwight D Eisenhower before her coronation, when the late president came to Windsor Castle for a tour. According to reports, the young princess playfully ducked under a table until the visiting American party left.
She was reunited with Eisenhower when he became president, a few years later. The Queen paid a four-day visit to the White House and even went to church with the president, charming his grandchildren.
In return for her American visit, the new queen invited Eisenhower to her Balmoral estate and cooked scones over a charcoal burner at a lakeside picnic. She even sent him the recipe because the president liked it so much.
John F Kennedy (1961-1963)
The Queen never met John F Kennedy while he was in office, due to a time of tension over the Vietnam War.
However, they met during a state dinner at Buckingham Palace when his father, Joseph Kennedy, was ambassador to Britain in 1961.
According to The Telegraph, the Kennedys had criticisms of the Queen following the state dinner. Photographer Cecil Beaton claimed that Kennedy “was unimpressed by the palace furnishings and by the Queen’s dress and hairstyle”, while writer Gore Vidal claimed that Jackie described the queen as “pretty heavy going”.
Lyndon B Johnson (1963-1969)
Queen Elizabeth II never met with President Lyndon B Johnson, but her sister, Princess Margaret, and her husband, the Earl of Snowdon, made an official visit to the White House on 1965.
It is unclear why the Queen never met Johnson.
Richard Nixon (1969-1974)
The Queen hosted Richard Nixon shortly after he became president.
Following a dinner at the White House, Prince Philip sent a letter to Nixon apologising for neglecting to toast the president in his speech.
“That night, I woke up in a cold sweat when I realised I had forgotten to propose your health!” he said, according to Los Angeles Times.
Gerald Ford (1974-1977)
The Queen came to Washington in 1976 to celebrate Gerald Ford’s bicentennial and danced with the president, while the President’s Own, the US Marine White House Dance Band infamously played The Lady is a Tramp.
Jimmy Carter (1977-1981)
When the Queen met Jimmy Carter, she joked that she needed to watch her waist because she had seven different tunics to wear as commander of various guards and she did not want to have to get new ones, according to The New York Times.
Their meeting quickly turned sour after he greeted the Queen Mother with a kiss instead of a bow.
Ronald Reagan (1981-1989)
President Ronald Reagan hosted a dinner event in honor of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip in San Francisco.
During her speech at the dinner, Queen Elizabeth joked, “I knew before we came that we had exported many of our traditions to the United States. I had not realised before that weather was one of them.”
George H W Bush (1989-1993)
President George H W Bush honored Her Majesty with an elaborate state arrival ceremony and dinner in 1991.
The Queen planted a Linden tree at the White House to replace the one that was taken down by a storm.
The original was planted in 1937 to honor the ascension of King George VI, her father to the throne.
Bill Clinton (1993-2001)
President Bill Clinton toured Buckingham Palace with the Queen in 1995, as part of a five-day European tour.
During the trip, the president announced a US warship would be named in honor of Winston Churchill.
George W Bush (2001-2009)
The Queen visited George W Bush in 2007.
During a formal dinner, she gently teased Bush over a verbal slip-up that added 200 years to her age.
Bush had stumbled over a line in his speech, initially saying the Queen had helped celebrate the US bicentennial in 1776, rather than 1976.
The Queen jokingly opened her speech with a toast to the president: “I wondered whether I should start this toast by saying, ‘When I was here in 1776...’”
Barack Obama (2009-2017)
Barack Obama recalled meeting with the Queen, following the news of her death.
In a video shared on his Instagram, he said: “Michelle and Malia and Sasha, my two daughters, had occasion to go back to England. Buckingham Palace reached out and Her Majesty had invited Michelle and the two girls to tea. She had then offered the girls to drive in her golden carriage around the grounds of Buckingham Palace.”
“It was the sort of generosity and consideration that left a mark in my daughters’ lives that’s still there,” he added.
Donald Trump (2017-2021)
The Queen met Donald Trump in 2018 at Windsor Castle.
Their meeting made headlines as the president broke royal etiquette by walking in front of the Queen.
The infamous trip also attracted large anti-Trump protests to London, including the hoisting of a balloon depicting Trump in a diaper.
Joe Biden (2021-)
The current US president met the Queen over tea at Windsor Castle in 2021.
The meeting marked the Queen’s first in-person meeting with a head of state since Prince Philip’s death on April of that year.
The president had met the Queen before, in 1982, when he was serving as a Democratic senator, and travelled to the UK that year for a meeting of the British-American Parliamentary Group.
