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Ruth Graham was born at Qingjiang, Kiangsu, China, as Ruth McCue Bell. Her parents, Dr. L. Nelson Bell and Virginia McCue Bell, were American medical missionaries at the Presbyterian Hospital 300 miles north of Shanghai. She grew up in China in a deeply religious household.\n\nBell studied for three years at a high school in Pyongyang, now in North Korea, before graduating from a school in Montreat, North Carolina, while her parents were on furlough.\n\nRuth returned to the U.S. at the age of 17 in the fall of 1937, and enrolled at Wheaton College, outside Chicago, Illinois, where she met Graham. They married on August 13, 1943. In 1945, after a brief stint as a suburban pastor, her husband became an evangelist for Youth for Christ. The Grahams moved to Montreat near her parents where the Grahams continued to live for the rest of their married life. Despite Billy Graham being one of the world's most famous Baptists, his wife remained a Presbyterian and often taught Sunday School.\n\nBetween 1945 and 1958, Mrs. Graham gave birth to five children, whom she raised \342\200\224 sometimes single-handedly \342\200\224 while her husband was away on extended national and international evangelistic crusades. The three daughters and two sons who survive her are all actively involved in ministry, including eldest son Franklin, who heads the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) founded by his father.\n\nIn 1959, Mrs. Graham published her first book, Our Christmas Story, an illustrated volume for children. She went on to write or co-write 13 other books, many of them works of poetry she wrote as an emotional release while her husband was so often on the road through the years.\n\nMrs. Graham's significant role in Billy Graham's ministry was recognized in 1996, when they were jointly awarded the Congressional Gold Medal in a special ceremony in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C..\n\nRuth Graham was always a vital part of Billy Graham's evangelistic career, and he turned to her for advice and input about many ministry decisions. One of the early uses of media by the BGEA was the \"Hour of Decision\" radio program begun in 1950, which she named. After her upbringing in China and high school experience in Korea, she continued to have compassion for the people of Asia. She encouraged her husband to visit and later accompanied him during his historic visits to the People's Republic of China.\n\nRuth Graham had been in frail health since suffering spinal meningitis in 1995. That was exacerbated by a degenerative back condition that began with a fall out of a tree while helping a grandchild fix a swing in 1974 that resulted in chronic back pain for many years. During the final months of her life, Graham was bedridden and contracted pneumonia.\n\nGraham lived with her husband at their house, Little Piney Cove, in Montreat, North Carolina, where she passed away, surrounded by her husband of 64 years and five children.\n\nIn 1966, she founded the Ruth and Billy Graham Children's Health Center in Asheville, North Carolina, with which she was actively involved until her death.\n\nOn June 13, 2007, following Ruth's decline into a semi-coma, Billy Graham announced that he and his wife had decided to be buried beside each other at the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, North Carolina. Ruth Bell Graham died after being bedridden for several months. She had suffered osteoarthritis in her back and neck along with the after effects after a fall she suffered in 1974, when trying to fix a tree swing for her grandchildren. On Monday, June 11, at her request and subsequent to consultation with her family, she was removed from life support, She died at 5:05 p.m. EDT June 14, 2007, at her home, Little Piney Cove, in Montreat, North Carolina, with her husband of 64 years and five children at her bedside.