It took more than three weeks for Dan Mulhern to to get a date with Jennifer Granholm. Fifteen weeks later, they were engaged.

“We had this ruse devised that she was going to the Plaza Hotel to meet an important Japanese client,” Mulhern says of their New York City engagement. “But it was just me sitting in a corner with roses and a proposal.”

Mulhern says he’s just as crazy about his wife, the state’s attorney general, as he was when he proposed to her more than 15 years ago.

But, he says, it’s not easy being the husband of the state’s Democratic gubernatorial hopeful.

“I freed up some time to work on the campaign, but it’s tough to have her work as hard as she does,” Mulhern said. “This is the gauntlet you must pass through in political life.”

On Nov. 5, Granholm will look to take her political life to the next level when she faces her chief opponent, Lt. Gov. Dick Posthumus, in the race to become the state’s next governor. Granholm would be Michigan’s first female governor.

“I don’t know how to say this without sounding sexist, but I think women are gifted with an ability to shift gears,” Mulhern said about his wife’s daily chameleon-like transformation from politician to homework adviser.

Mulhern and Granholm have three children: Kate, 13, Cecilia, 11, and Jack, 5.

When the attorney general gets home after a long day of campaigning and work, the first thing she says she does is “get comfortable.”

“I change into my sweat pants and sit down with my family,” she said. “We have dinner, I help my kids do their homework, put them to bed, get online and check my e-mail.”

Mulhern said Granholm has always balanced a heavy load.

On their way back to Harvard Law School after separate vacations from school, the two law students met in Newark Liberty International Airport.“She had two huge suitcases and she insisted on carrying the weight on her own,” Mulhern said.

Granholm was born in the Canadian province of British Columbia. At age 4, she moved with her parents to a suburb of San Francisco.

After earning bachelor’s degrees in political science and French from the University of California, Berkeley, Granholm attended Harvard Law School and graduated in 1987.

Granholm’s favorite memory from college is the dorm life at Harvard.

“I was in an all-women’s dorm, and I never met more women who wanted to be president of the United States,” she said. “It was very cool. I really enjoyed that camaraderie.”

She said her peers were “very smart, savvy and competitive women who have all gone on to do great things.”

Granholm and Mulhern were married in 1986 and moved to Michigan in 1988.

Since then, Granholm worked as a clerk for the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals for a year and a federal prosecutor for four years. She was later appointed Wayne County corporation counsel, serving for about four years. Every day, Granholm wakes up at 5 a.m. and usually goes to sleep around 11 p.m.

“I have by my bedside right now a lot of nonfiction,” she said. “I’m reading a Teddy Roosevelt biography. If I’m going away, I like a good John Grisham novel, but mostly I read Batman and Scooby-Doo to my 5-year-old.”

Granholm said some of her favorite childhood memories involve the outdoors.

“We weren’t all that wealthy so we would drive up the coast and camp,” she said of her family vacations as a child.

During her free time now, she likes to “get away” with her family.

“We do the lazy thing and rent a cottage on an inland lake. I love to canoe or row boat and fish with the kids, let them do some exploring.

“Those are all the great things you can do in Michigan, that’s what is so great about growing up here.”