Nydia Quintero Turbay
# Nydia Quintero Turbay

Nydia Quintero Turbay (born 28 August 1932) is the ex-wife of the 25th president of Colombia, Julio César Turbay Ayala, and served as First Lady of Colombia from 1978 to 1982 when they were still married.

She is the president of Fundación Solidaridad por Colombia, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the condition of impoverished Colombian families through educational and nutritional programs for children, the disabled and the poor.

## Personal life

She was born on 28 August 1932 in Neiva, Huila to Jorge Quintero Céspedes and Adhalía Turbay Ayala. She is of Lebanese and Basque descent. She attended La Presentación in Neiva where she lived until the death of her father when she moved to Bogotá to study at the Liceo Nacional Femenino Antonia Santos. On 18 May 1948, against the wishes of her family, she married her maternal uncle Julio César Turbay Ayala in a clandestine wedding in a Roman Catholic ceremony at Santa Teresita Church in Bogotá. From their marriage they had four children: Julio César, Diana Consuelo, Claudia, and María Victoria. She divorced her husband in 1983 after his term as president of Colombia and hers as first lady had ended, and remarried the following year in 1984 to Gustavo Balcázar Monzón, her marriage to former President Turbay Ayala was finally annulled by the Catholic Church in 1986.

## Honour

* Spain: Dame Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Isabella the Catholic
