[39] Her paternal great-grandfather is Fray Francisco Miguel Lopez Silgado, a Spanish Friar and silversmith from Granada, Andalusia who became the parish priest of Pandacan in Manila.

For the remainder of that Holy Week, Ferdinand showered Imelda with flowers and gifts and visited her daily, prodding her to sign the marriage license that sealed the agreement.

[66][page needed] Imelda had assumed a managerial position in her husband's campaign early on when Marcos faced his first challenge, which was to win the presidential candidacy for the Nacionalista Party.

Receptions at her offices in the Malacañang "Music Room" were sought after by cabinet members, heads of financing institutions, and business leaders who felt that she had Ferdinand's ear.

To fix this, Imelda allegedly sent out invitations to family members, some of whom supported the opposing party, and told them they were all welcome at their house on Ortega Street in San Juan, which was then part of Rizal.

[73] They contributed funds and provided publicity, giving the campaign a personal touch by visiting factories and farms to shake hands and have small conversations with the voters, making door-to-door appeals in the slum areas.

[90][88]: 225 [5] President Marcos had met the American actress after she arrived in Manila in 1968 to play the female lead in Maharlika, a propaganda film portraying Ferdinand's supposed exploits during World War II.

[5] Initially, this meant that Imelda had free rein on her projects while her husband prepared for the 1969 presidential campaign,[5] but as Marcos's health declined, it involved her being put in increasingly powerful positions, including those of Minister of Human Settlements and of Governor of Metro Manila.

[66][page needed] When the Marcoses went to the United States in September 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson offered Imelda the Philippine war damage claims totaling US$28 million.

[64] In Ferdinand's diary preceding May, he wrote that he and Imelda were planning to wager all their power and wealth "on a single throw of the dice of fate for the sake of the people and the Republic".

[100][101] An assassination attempt against Imelda Marcos occurred on December 7, 1972, when an assailant named Carlito Dimahilig tried to stab her on live television with a bolo knife in Nayong Pilipino but was shot by the police.

[114] Because most of the opposition candidates were either in jail or had limited mobility as a result of Martial Law,[115] Imelda Marcos easily won a seat as a member of the Interim Batasang Pambansa (National Congress) representing Region IV (Metro Manila).

[131] After Imelda left Malacañang Palace, press reports worldwide took note of her lavish wardrobe, said to include 15 mink coats, 508 gowns, 888 handbags, and 3,000 pairs of shoes.

[132] The US government documented that the Marcos family entered the United States with millions of dollars in cash, stocks, jewelry, and gold kilobars inscribed "To my husband on our 24th anniversary".

[139] She chose not to seek re-election in Congress and instead sought the presidency again in the 1998 Philippine presidential election, but later withdrew to support the eventual winner Joseph Estrada, while she finished 9th among 11 candidates.

[158] In October 1988, Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos,[159][160] together with eight associates (including Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian businessman and weapons smuggler believed to have been involved with her husband's regime), were indicted by a federal grand jury in Manhattan on charges of racketeering,[161][162] conspiracy, fraud and obstruction of justice.

[169] In July 1990, following a three-month trial, she was acquitted of all charges,[168] after Imelda had successfully characterized herself as “a poor widow who knew nothing about her husband’s activities.”[134][16] In 1990, the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland ruled that funds in the Marcoses' Swiss bank accounts were of "criminal provenance".

[175] In March 2008, a judge in Manila acquitted her of 32 counts of illegal transfers of funds to Swiss bank accounts between 1968 and 1976, determining that the government had failed to prove its case.

[179] Twenty-seven years later, on November 9, 2018, she was convicted on seven counts of violating the Anti-Graft and Corrupt Practices Act, for funneling roughly US$200 million to various Swiss foundations while she was still serving as governor of Metro Manila in the 1970s.

[185] The Philippine Supreme Court considers the unexplained wealth of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos to be "ill-gotten" based on the definitions set forth in Republic Act 1379, which was passed in 1955.

[23] Dr. Jesus Estanislao, another noted economist from the CRC, said this figure reflected amounts taken out of the country in the years immediately prior to the ouster of the Marcos administration, and that there was no way to accurately estimate the wealth acquired by the Marcoses since the 1950s.

[200] On one occasion, Imelda spent $2,000 on chewing gum at the San Francisco International Airport and, on another, forced a plane to do a U-turn mid-air because she had forgotten to buy cheese in Rome.

[209] Some of this wealth has been recovered as the result of various court cases – and has either been returned to the Philippine government, or awarded as reparations to the victims of human rights abuses under Marcos's presidency.

[238][239] On October 17, 2013, the attempted sale of two Claude Monet paintings,[240] L'Eglise de Vetheuil and Le Bassin Aux Nymphéas, became the subject of a legal case in New York against Vilma Bautista, a one-time aide to Imelda Marcos.

[247][248][249] She has claimed without evidence that her fortune came from Ferdinand Marcos's discovery of Yamashita's gold, a semi-mythical treasure trove that is widely believed in the Philippines to be part of the Japanese loot in World War II.

[255][256][30] She is quoted as having stated: "We practically own everything in the Philippines, from electricity, telecommunications, airlines, banking, beer and tobacco, newspaper publishing, television stations, shipping, oil and mining, hotels and beach resorts, down to coconut milling, small farms, real estate and insurance.

[281][282][283] For instance, she actively promoted the terno, which also became her sartorial symbol,[284] through projects such as "Bagong Anyo" and exhibitions abroad such as the Philippine contribution to the Expo '75 in Okinawa Japan.

[285] Imelda made a conscious effort to portray herself as a patron of the arts,[72] including those who specialize in Filipino haute couture such as Pitoy Moreno and Inno Sotto.

[306] In 2010, British producer Fatboy Slim and musician David Byrne released a concept album about her life called Here Lies Love,[307] which later became a rock musical of the same name.

She is also portrayed by actress Dimples Romana Marcos on the Maalaala Mo Kaya episode entitled Makinilya, the second of the two-part "The Ninoy & Cory Aquino Story" aired on ABS-CBN in 2010.